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VOLUNTEERS 

in OPA 





VOLUNTEERS 
in OPA 

iU 

V 

47 

Imogene H. Putnam 

* » 

\ 

]\ V sWlCo ) T" e-pOTTS CTO W GOT Oldbnn \ C ' sWCLi \OTl k 



Under the general supervision of 
Harvey C. Mansfield, Chief, 
Policy Analysis Branch 



Office of Temporary Controls 
Office of Price Administration 


\W 


# 





HISTORICAL REPORTS ON WAR ADMINISTRATION: 
OFFICE OF PRICE ADMINISTRATION 

OFFICE OF TEMPORARY CONTROLS 
OFFICE OF PRICE ADMINISTRATION 

General Publication No. 14 

Volumes in this series for sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. 
Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C. 


Miscellaneous 

Publication No. Title Price 

1. OPA Chronology_$1. 00 

2. Minutes of the Price Administration Committee_ . 30 

3. OPA Bibliography, 1940-47_ 


General 

Publication No. 

1. The Beginnings of OPA_ . 50 

2. A History of Ration Banking_ . 35 

3. Wartime Apparel Price Control_ . 40 

4. Field Administration of Wartime Rationing_ . 40 

5. OPA and the Public Utility Commissions_ . 25 

6. Studies in Industrial Price Control_ . 35 

7. Problems in Price Control: Pricing Standards_ 

8. Problems in Price Control: Pricing Techniques_ 

9. Problems in Price Control: Changing Production Patterns_ . 75 

10. Problems in Price Control: Stabilization Subsidies_ 

11. Problems in Price Control: Legal Phases.''_ . 25 

12. Problems in Price Control: National Office Organization and Manage¬ 

ment_ 

13. Studies in Food Rationing_*_ 

14. Volunteers in OPA_ . 35 

15. A Short History of OPA__ 


• • 
ll 


» 




















LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL 


May 25, 1947 

My dear Mr. Clark: 

I transmit herewith a volume entitled Volunteers in OP A, by Imo- 
gene H. Putnam. It is General Publication No. 14 in the OP A series 
of Historical Reports on War Administration, and has been approved 
for publication. 

Respectfully submitted. 

Harvey C. Mansfield, 

Chief , Policy Analysis Branch 


Earl W. Clark , 

Director , Division of Liquidation , 
Office of Temporary Controls 
































’ 













')) 


! 




















' • 






















FOREWORD 


This is one of the narrative and analytical volumes in the OPA 
series of Historical Reports on War Administration. As such, it is a 
part of the agency’s share in the comprehensive program of studies 
of the experience of the civilian administrative agencies brought into 
being by the war, which was initiated by President Franklin D. Roose¬ 
velt in 1942 and confirmed in July 1945 by President Harry S. Truman. 
The general scope and purpose of this program is set forth in the 
preface to The United States at War , recently published by the Bureau 
of the Budget. 

The present volume deals with one of the largest and longest sus¬ 
tained examples in our history of the recruitment and use of volun¬ 
teers in aid of their Government during an emergency. They were 
drawn from all walks of life, they performed all manner of tasks. 
Many came and went; some tens of thousands came and stayed. They 
brought special problems, but they gave to OPA’s local activities the 
distinctive strength and tone of civic participation, of amateur non- 
bureaucratic administration of regulations having the force of law. 
They were indispensable, in their physical numbers and in the spirit 
they imparted, for the success and the acceptance of the agency’s 
programs as they touched consumers. This account not only reviews 
the extent of volunteer accomplishments but also analyzes the admin¬ 
istrative problems and points the practical lessons learned in the 
course of the experience. It should therefore interest both those who 
had some share in the work and those who are concerned to understand 
the techniques of harnessing the energies of a free citizenry for the 
common benefit. 

This study is chiefly concerned with the volunteer contribution to 
the conduct of rationing and price control in the local communities. 
Other OPA volunteers, the advisory groups at the national, regional, 
and district offices, are mentioned only in their relation to operations 
at the local boards. Some of them partook otherwise of the nature 
of organized interest groups, with a different type of motivation and 
usefulness. The studv is further limited to a discussion of volunteers 
in the continental United States. The volunteer work done in Region 
IX, our territories and island possessions, followed a somewhat differ- 


v 


VI 


Foreword 


ent pattern, which has been described in detail elsewhere. 1 Volunteers 
played only a minor role in rent control. 

The plan of procedure in the preparation and publication of this 
volume follows the same lines approved at the time the first of our 
substantive publications, The Beginnings of OP A, was undertaken. 
The author’s name on the title page indicates that she has been given 
both freedom and responsibility for the development of her material. 
She writes on a subject she knows authoritatively from several years’ 
experience in the OPA district office for the District of Columbia, and 
accordingly brings to her task an intimate operating familiarity with 
the problems discussed, as well as a broad perspective on their signifi¬ 
cance. She has had full access to file materials in the agency so far 
as physical limitations permitted their use, and has had the benefit 
of consultation and advice from many official and unofficial sources; 
but the statements of fact and of interpretation are hers. 

Acknowledgments are due to Mrs. Marion Andrews and Mrs. Doro¬ 
thea Franck for editorial help; to Miss Molly Flynn, former liaison 
officer with the Office of Civilian Defense, for a critical reading; to 
Mrs. Elizabeth Rohr, of the Staff of the Consumer Advisory Commit¬ 
tee in the national office, Mrs. Marion Weir of St. Louis, a member of 
that committee, Miss Constance Roach, of the Training Branch, and 
to James E. Mendenhall and Ruth Evarts O’Brien of the Information 
Department, for source material. Mrs. Anne Flory, formerly on the 
staff of the New 1l ork Regional Office, and later in charge of price 
panel coordination in the national office, was continuously helpful in 
furnishing pertinent material and in making constructive suggestions. 
Frank Bane, of the Council of State Governments has read the manu¬ 
script and encouraged its publication. The original draft was sub¬ 
mitted to a number of other former officials familiar with the subject 
matter and their comments have been taken into account in the revision. 

The public interest precludes any attempt on the part of the agency 
to impose here an official view in the evaluation of its many past 
activities. The manuscript has therefore been reviewed by the Policy 
Analysis Committee only to make sure that statutory requirements 
relating to the disclosure of confidential information have been ob- 

served, and to safeguard appropriate standards of scholarships and 
objectivity. 

Harvey C. Mansfield, 

Chief , Policy Analysis Branch , 

Office of Place Administration , 

Office of Temyoraiaj Controls . 

May 25,1947. 


1 Mary Gresham, History of Region IX, OPA Bibliography, 19J f 0-J,7; item No. 10K.91. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Foreword_ v 

Introduction_ 1 

Chapter 1.—The Groundwork_ 9 

“To Allay the Restlessness”_ 9 

Consumer Education Under OPACS_ 10 

A Question of Tactics_ 12 

Chapter 2.—The Rationing Boards_ 15 

Citizens Serving Without Pay_ 16 

Rationing Board Members_ 17 

Peak Load Volunteers_ 18 

Regular Volunteers_ 18 

A Change of Name_ 19 

Auxiliary Volunteers_ 20 

The Pattern is Set_ 21 

Volunteer Administration_,_ 23 

0 

Chapter 3.—Price Impasse_ 27 

Participation at the National Level_ 27 

General Max and the Housewife_ 28 

General Max and the Local Boards_ 30 

Name Calling_ 31 

The Consumer Division Demonstrates_ 33 

Richmond Fights Inflation_ 33 

Whose Volunteer Plan?_ 34 

The Legal Proposal_ 35 

Protests_ 35 

The Volunteer Viewpoint_ 36 

Information’s Channel to the Grass Roots_ 37 

Stalemate_ 38 

Chapter 4.—Field Experiments, 1942- 39 

New York, First_ 40 

The New England States_ 42 

Little OPA’s_ 42 

Maine_ 43 

Massachusetts_ 44 

New Hampshire’s Exception- 45 

Vermont Works Out a Compliance Survey- 46 

A Board Chairman in Connecticut- 46 

• • 

Yll 







































viii Contents 

Page 

Across the Country_ • 47 

The Virginia Plan_ 47 

Spartanburg—Point Rationing and Price- 47 

The Price Panel in Laurel, Mississippi_ 48 

No Experiments_ 48 

The Kenosha Plan_ 49 

No Clerk Available_ 50 

California Organizes_ 50 

Price Panels_ 50 

The Volunteer Supervisor_ 51 

Need for National Leadership_ 52 

Chapter 5.—Volunteers for Price Control_ 55 

Compliance Before Enforcement_ 55 

A Belated Invitation_ 56 

Whose Responsibility?_ 57 

Hurdles_ 59 

The Price Division Recruits_ 60 

The June Survey, 1943_ 62 

Chapter 6 .—Neighborly Persuasion_ 67 

Price Panel Development_ 67 

Appointment__* 68 

Procedure_ 69 

Panel Authority_ 70 

Early Persuasion_ 72 

The Promise to Comply_ 73 

Consumer Complaints_ 76 

A Failure of Neighborly Persuasion_ 78 

Accomplishments_ 80 

Chapter 7.—Chester Bowles Gives a Lift_ 83 

Introduction by Radio_ 83 

Advisory Committees_ 84 

Consultation with Industry_ 85 

Labor Cooperation_ 85 

Consumer Advisory Committee_ 86 

The Home Front Pledge_ 88 

Second Anniversary_ 89 

Chapter 8 .—Price Panel Assistants_ 93 

Technical Supervision_ 95 

The Emergency Price Check_ 97 

The Emergency Price Check in Region III_ 97 

“Don’t Buy Another Depression”_ 98 

The Compliance Goal_ 100 

The OWI Survey_ 101 

The Volunteer Specialist_ 102 - 

The One-for-One Campaign_ 102 

Improved Methods_ 104 
















































Contents ix 

Page 

Chapter 9.—Shifts in Emphasis_ 107 

The St. Louis Plan_ 107 

The Grocer-Consumer Anti-inflation Campaign_ 110 

The Administrator’s Claim_ 115 

Price Panel Reactions_ 117 

The Hearing Panel, Washington, D. C_ 118 

Results_ 119 

Chapter 10.—The Organized Volunteer Program_ 121 

Review_ 121 

Relations with OCD_ 124 

Accomplishments_ 126 

Student Clericals Region VI_ 126 

The Volunteei Program in Region VII_ 129 

Chapter 11.—Volunteers, 1946_ 135 

Reorganization_ 135 

The Situation in March 1946_ 137 

Price Board Management Plans_ 139 

Awards and Recognition_ 140 

At the End_ 141 

Chapter 12.—Conclusions_ 143 

Appendix_ 151 

























* 

■ 

> 
















INTRODUCTION 


It is not unprecedented for Americans to lend aid to their Govern¬ 
ment. From the days of the New England town meeting this has been 
a part of our democratic heritage. Alexis de Tocqueville, traveling in 
this country when Andrew Jackson was President, noted with some 
amazement the number of civic societies and the tendency of people of 
all classes to come together in groups, a to improve . . . the pub¬ 
lic safety, commerce, industry, morality. . . .” 1 Any program 
intimately affecting the lives of American people can and must reckon 
with this democratic desire for participation. 

Rationing and price control were such programs. They touched the 
lives of 130,000,000 Americans closely and personally. They were new, 
they were restrictive, and they were distasteful to the independence of 
the American spirit. They could scarcely have been administered in 
a democratic country without acceptance by tlie majority of the people. 
They were urgent wartime measures; it was imperative that they be 
accepted and that their administration reach into every corner of the 
country. OPA turned to the psychology of the town meeting to gain 
local acceptance and to the American habit of community participation 
to solve the problems of local administration. In an action unparal¬ 
leled even in other democratic countries, OPA called upon citizens in 
the local communities to administer the rationing and price-control 
laws and these volunteers constituted over 75 percent of OPA’s staff. 

There were approximately 5.500 price and rationing boards through¬ 
out the country. Each was presided over by a volunteer board chair¬ 
man, nominated from the community and appointed by the OPA Dis¬ 
trict Director. Each chairman was assisted in his work by similarly 
appointed board members, “fairminded citizens of known integrity,” 
who specialized in one or other of the regulations to be administered. 
In large boards the members were formed into panels, such as the gas¬ 
oline rationing panel, and the grocery price panel. These board mem¬ 
bers were sworn employees of the Federal Government serving without 
pay. They were given adjudicative and enforcement powers. They 
issued the rations of gasoline and they mediated the settlement of 
overcharges. At the height of the program more than 100,000 board 
members, most of them busy people with other jobs as well, met night 
after night to administer these wartime measures for the benefit of 
their neighbors. 


1 Democracy in America , Alexis de Tocqueville. 


1 



2 


Volunteers in OP A 


Another group of board members, known as the community service 
members undertook the task of informing and educating theii com¬ 
munities on OPA problems. These public relations or information 
volunteers worked through local organizations, the press and the radio, 
and their members were usually drawn from those sources. 

The record-keeping functions of the local boards were carried on by 
paid clerks, but because OPA’s budget was slim for its needs and 
because citizens were willing to help in these humdrum tasks, thousands 
of clerical or “regular” volunteers helped the paid clerks. 

Acting on the principle that probably 95 percent of all price viola¬ 
tions were caused by ignorance or indifference, OPA drew another 
group of volunteers, the price panel assistants, generally from the 
women’s organizations, to make educational and compliance surveys 
of the retailers in their communities. 

When the War Ration Books were issued (one for each man, woman, 
and child in the country), or the big registrations were held, additional 
volunteers were enlisted for that service only. The school teachers and 
members of the parent-teachers associations formed the backbone of 
this group and came to be known as the “peak load” volunteers. 

By OPA directive each local board was a cross section of the com¬ 
munity representing all groups, without regard to color, race, religion, 
or political party. Business and labor, professional men, housewives, 
and farmers were all included in the local volunteer government of 
rationing and price control. 

Not only did OPA give unprecedented control to the people in ad¬ 
ministering its laws, it invited representatives of the people to advise 
it on the policy and content of the regulations. From the day of the 
early price schedules under OPACS, representative members of the 
trade concerned were consulted when regulations or major amend¬ 
ments were to be issued. In 1945 there were 625 such volunteer In¬ 
dustry Advisory Committees, with a total of 7,500 members. The 
national OPA also had a Labor Policy Committee to advise on regu¬ 
lations as they affected wages and the cost of living. The Labor Policy 
Committee was composed of 6 volunteers from each of the 3 major 
labor organizations, the American Federation of Labor, the Congress 
of Industrial Organizations, and the Railway Brotherhoods. Be¬ 
tween them they represented and expressed the support of ten to 
fifteen million union members. OPA’s third type of national ad¬ 
visory committee represented consumers through 30 volunteer mem¬ 
bers, leaders in the field of consumer economics. Twenty of these 
members were also housewives who coped with the day-by-day prob¬ 
lems of wartime shopping. This committee met 5 times a year in 
Washington and attempted to present to the operating divisions of 
OPA the point of view of the unorganized consumers of the country. 


Introduction 


3 


Each of these advisory committees had its counterpart in OPA’s 
regional and district offices. Administrators at these levels consulted 
with the advisory committees on the operating problems of the pro¬ 
gram. The thousands of volunteers participating in this way ex¬ 
pressed the viewpoint of the hundreds of thousands whom they repre¬ 
sented, and carried back to those hundreds of thousands an explanation 
of the problems of price control. 

The fundamental achievement of the volunteer program was to pro¬ 
vide, at the grassroots, nonbureaucratic administration of bureaucratic 
controls. However, this achievement was not consciously planned in 
the beginning. It was rather a development born of necessity, intro¬ 
duced and fostered by believers in local participation as a democratic 
principle. In 1942 rationing volunteers filled an urgent need follow¬ 
ing Pearl Harbor. The sponsors of their use emphasized that this 
would also be an advantage in diffusing credit and blame for success 
and failures, instead of concentrating all political dissatisfactions on 
the national office in Washington. Volunteer local administration was 
eventually accepted by the agency as the surest means of gaining com¬ 
munity acceptance for rationing and price-control restrictions, and 
because it helped to spread OPA’s funds. But in the minds of some, 
though not all, in the agency, there was a justification for it beyond 
necessity or economy or the desire to please: this was the belief that it 
was better administration, more democratcially handled, and conducted 
with a broader view of the national interest, than any wholly paid staff 
could have provided. 

The local boards were going concerns for over a year, before the 
need for price volunteers was officially recognized in 1943. The na¬ 
tional office then urged their appointment and for the next year and a 
half developed the price panel system as a method of “neighborly per¬ 
suasion.” In late 1944, the price panels were delegated power to 
negotiate settlements of the Administrator’s Claims for over-ceiling 
charges by retailers, and from then on moved closer to the enforcement 
work of OPA. After the end of the war in August 1945, when ration¬ 
ing was abolished, the imperative need for reaching into each neighbor¬ 
hood was reduced to the need for reaching each retail trade center. 
By this time the volunteer boards had long since proved their public 
relations value, and had shown that under proper conditions they were 
also effective instruments of price control. Keorganized and reduced 
in number, they were maintained until the end of the program in 
November 1946, as the operating units and points of public contact 
for retail price control. 

In all of these ways, through local volunteer administration, and 
through specific-interest advisory committees, OPA met the chal¬ 
lenge of administering a restrictive law in a democratic country. 


4 


V olunteers in OP A 


Community participation was an integral part of the various defense 
programs from the days of the National Defense Advisory Commis¬ 
sion. Both Selective Service and the Office of Civilian Defense, as 
well as OP A, provided examples of this general acceptance of local 
participation, but the forms which it took within OPA evolved from 
the special needs of the agency and were unique in this or any other 
country. 

It is difficult to gauge the amount of agency support that was given 
to this departure from the accepted paths of Federal bureauracy. 
The Congress of the United States had provided for the use of volun¬ 
teers within the OPA structure. Section 201 (a) of the Emergency 
Price Control Act reads: 

The Administrator may utilize the services of Federal, State, and local agencies 
and may utilize and establish such regional, local, and other agencies, and utilize 
and establish such voluntary and uncompensated services as may from time to 
time be needed. 

The volunteers were thus duly authorized. Moreover, community 
participation became the expressed policy of each OPA Administrator 
in turn. But the development of community participation as a local 
instrument for the administration of Federal law was the responsi¬ 
bility of specific policy makers within the agency. Its contribution to 
price control would have been even greater had all the officials within 
OPA been agreed upon its desirability. This was never the case. The 
rationing volunteers were installed almost before OPA was aware of 
the fact and were accepted as a matter of necessity, but the use of price 
volunteers was a bone of contention during the first year of the pro¬ 
gram and was never fully espoused in some quarters of the agency. 
At no time were all the divisions of all the regional and district offices 
giving support to volunteer participation as outlined in the official 
directives. The decentralization of OPA which permitted this varia¬ 
tion in operation also allowed individual staff members with initiative 
to develop volunteer programs beyond the scope of the national plan. 
Volunteer achievement was both limited and enriched by these 
circumstances. 

The President of the United States, each of the four Administrators 
of OPA, and many individual executives at all levels gave their full 
support to this development in local self-government. The problems 
inherent in this experiment such as recruiting, training, and retention 
of personnel; the problems of securing impartial administration by 
the agency, and of gaining uniform adherence to the regulations and 
community acceptance of the decisions of volunteer lay adjudicators; 
these problems, all closely allied, were met by OPA with varying de¬ 
grees of success at various times and places. They give point to this 
account of volunteer local administration of a Federal law. 


introduction 


5 


OPA PYRAMID 



/ WASHINGTON OFFICE 
6 Departments 





/ WAR PRICE AND RATIONING BOARDS 

5,525 boards THE FOUNDATION of American price control. They 
bring OPA to every American community, They exemplify the American ideal 
of “local self-administration”—a striking contrast to the rule imposed on Axis 
territories, where citizens have no voice or rights in government. 



SOURCE: Atlanta Regional Office 



NO. 5510 











CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION 

BETWEEN THE LOCAL BOARD AND THE DISTRICT OFFICE 


6 


V olunteers in OP A 

































Introduction 


7 


SUGGESTED ORGANIZATION 
OF A MEDIUM-SIZED 
F’RICE AND RATIONING BOARD 



♦Recruits, Trains, Assigns, and Supervises Volunteers. 


OFFICE OF PRICE ADMINISTRATION 
PERSONNEL DIVISION 
NO. 6315-S 


O 


749937—47 




















































































































































































CHAPTER 

1 

The Groundwork 


"To Allay the Restlessness” 

The groundwork for volunteer participation in OP A was laid long 
before the office itself was created. In May 1940, on the eve of Dun¬ 
kirk, President Roosevelt appointed a National Defense Advisory 
Commission of seven commissioners to mobilize the resources of this 
country for defense. We are primarily concerned here with two mem¬ 
bers, the Commissioner for Price Stabilization, Leon Henderson, and 
the Commissioner for Consumer Protection, Harriet Elliott, and with 
the Commission’s presently established Division of State and Local 
Cooperation. At this time Mr. Henderson’s task was to control the 
prices of raw materials at the wholesale-producer-manufacturer level. 
Miss Elliott was concerned with problems at the retail and ultimate- 
consumer level. The powers of both were advisory only, but Hender¬ 
son’s price schedules were backed up by the Government’s wartime 
right to requisition or allocate private property. Miss Elliott’s ad¬ 
vice was backed neither by wartime powers nor by specific Presiden¬ 
tial directive. Her sphere was both vague and controversial; in Gov¬ 
ernment councils she presented the case for civilian needs when defense 
measures were being planned, and around the country she attempted to 
prepare civilians for their part in total defense. It was her concep¬ 
tion of total defense which laid the psychological groundwork for 
future consumer participation in rationing and price control/ In her 
own words: 

Total defense is democracy’s answer to total war. It protects our democratic 
way of life . . . Total defense gives every man and woman in the Nation 
the opportunity to participate in the defense of those tangible and intangible 
benefits of a democracy which are our heritage . 1 

In July 1940, only a few weeks after her appointment, Miss Elliott 
invited the representatives of 100 civic organizations to Washington 


1 Harriet Elliott, speech before Herald-Tribune forum, October 22, 1940. 


9 




10 


Volunteers in OP A 


to consider methods of consumer participation in the defense prepara¬ 
tions of the country. In 1940 Americans were not at war and many 
of them could scarcely believe that the United States would become 
involved, but the news from Europe grew more disturbing each day, 
and the Government knew that allocations of material for defense 
would soon touch the public. As part of her responsibility for con¬ 
sumer protection Miss Elliott called this conference “to allay the 
restlessness of a people eager to help in the emergency.” 2 The repre¬ 
sentatives carried back to their organizations, and through them to 
thousands of communities over the country, Miss Elliott’s philosophy 
that total defense meant democratic participation in the defense effort. 

A month later, in August 1940, the Division of State and Local Co¬ 
operation was added to the Advisory Commission, with Frank Bane, 
of the Council of State Governments, at its head. He had had a major 
share in organizing the field network of the social security system. 
In England and on the Continent civilians were already taking part 
in the actual defense of the country as fire fighters, air-raid wardens, 
first-aid nurses, victory gardeners, and salvage committees. Fore¬ 
seeing the possibility of such needs here, Bane began the development 
of State and local defense councils through and under the State Gov¬ 
ernors. In May 1941 his division was expanded and reconstituted as 
the Office of Civilian Defense 3 under the leadership of Mayor La- 
Guardia, who shifted the organization’s emphasis toward direct con¬ 
tacts with municipal authorities. Bane, retaining his nexus with the 
State capitals, joined OP A in October 1941 as head of a Division of 
Field Operations, to build a field organization. 

Miss Elliott's Consumer Protection Division in 1940 urged the ap¬ 
pointment of consumer representatives on the defense councils, and 
the formation of consumer information centers and local price-watch¬ 
ing committees. The division issued a bulletin which carried consumer 
suggestions to civic organizations and to colleges. The mushrooming 
of defense plants created housing shortages, and the bulletin outlined 
a plan for the “Maintenance of Fair Bents During the Emergency.” 
A later issue proposed a model rent law which, although it was not 
enacted in any State, greatly influenced the final national rent 
legislation. 

Consumer Education Under OPACS 

By April 1941, advisory price control was no longer adequate to 
stem the rising tide of prices. The Office of Price Administration and 
Civilian Supply was established by Executive Order 8734 on April 11. 


2 Memorandum, Cunningham to Elliott, July 16, L940, Consumer Division files. 

3 Executive Order No. 8757, May 20, 1941. 



The Groundwork 


11 


Leon Henderson was appointed Administrator, with Harriet Elliott 
as associate, at the head of the Consumer Division. Mr. Henderson’s 
previous advisory functions were now strengthened and more sharply 
defined. Miss Elliott’s sphere on the other hand seemed to grow more 
nebulous. Her role as consumer protector at the seat of Government 
almost disappeared, and her field work narrowed to the education of 
consumers in wartime living. 4 

Building upon the experience of the last war, the Consumer Di¬ 
vision set up the first local participating committees of World War 
II, the Fair Rent Committees. These volunteers were appointed by 
the mayors and ‘‘represented a cross section of the dominant interests 
of the community, frequently including representatives of real-estate 
groups, labor organizations, civic organizations, and, where military 
cantonments were in the vicinity, an army officer.” 5 After the passage 
of the Emergency Price Control Act these committees were disbanded, 
but the method by which they decided “fair rents” was accepted: a 
normal rent date, prior to the impact of defense activities, was there¬ 
after set for each “defense rental area” as a freeze date for determining 
rent ceilings. 6 

By the summer of 1941 the Consumer Division field staff was 
organized “to reach the following segments of the population: (1) 
colleges and secondary schools; (2) women’s civic groups; (3) the 
labor groups; (4) Negro grotips; and (5) second generation foreign 
groups.” 7 Through speeches and printed material to these groups the 
field staff reached into every State and made people aware of the new 
phraseology: “conservation of scarce materials,” “shortages” and “sub¬ 
stitutes,” “standards” and “grade labelling.” In some communities 
the consumer representative on the local defense council had set up 
consumer interest committees or consumer information centers. The 
Consumer Division field staff encouraged the forming of more com- 


4 For a fuller discussion of these developments see The Beginnings of OPA, OPA Series 
of Historical Reports on War Administration, pp. 23-29 (Washington, 1947). 

5 First Quarterly Report, Consumer Division files. 

6 After the passage of the Price Control Act, January 1942, the Fair Rent Committees 
were dissolved and the volunteer contribution to rent control assumed a minor role. Fre¬ 
quently, but not universally, vonlunteers were used in registration work where a new area 
came under rent control. Occasionally clerical volunteers were used for peak-load service. 
In 1943 and 1944 some few areas also used volunteers to make spot checks of compliance. 
In Norfolk, Va., the Roy Scouts were used for this purpose ; they went from door to door 
asking three or four simple questions and recording the answers. This type of compliance 
check seems to have been dropped not through lack or inadequacy of volunteers but because 
the rent offices themselves were too short-handed to process the returns. Volunteers were 
not used extensively in rent control but the field offices were very much indebted to the 
volunteer Consumer Interest Committees of OCD for their continued educational work on 
the rent-control law. 

1 Memorandum for the Files, Dexter Keezer, Summary of Activities of the Consumer 
Division, April 1941—March 1942. 



12 


Volunteers OP A 

mittees and the expansion of existing ones. They wrote a Handbook 
for Consumer Committees and sent out fact sheets and outlines for 
speeches and training programs for consumer centers. In August 
1941, the Consumer Division held a conference with 21 representatives 
of the Pennsylvania State and local defense councils to organize a 
program for the 450 consumer interest committees already set up in 
the State. 

As the far eastern crisis developed during the fall months, the 
consumer centers found a ready audience even though money was 
plentiful and acute shortages of consumer goods were still ahead. 
Prices were rising at an alarming pace. Whether or not the United 
States was to become involved in the military war, there was real 
danger of losing the battle against inflation. Housewives saw their 
household money shrinking in value and they turned eagerly to their 
organizations or to the consumer centers for information and advice. 
Methods of reaching the community varied, but all “centers” became 
focal points for consumers eager to prepare themselves for whatever 
was to come. In Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit the consumer com¬ 
mittees set up information centers. In Washington, D. C. the center 
ottered training classes for leaders in community work, and for house¬ 
wives on the proper care of home appliances. Some centers set up ex¬ 
hibits of wartime substitutes and made radio broadcasts on wise buv- 
ing. They made individual price studies and published the findings 
of “price-watching” committees. They received and recorded com¬ 
plaints. By 1942, 76 such consumer centers and hundreds of con¬ 
sumer committees scattered throughout the country were alerting 
their communities in the war against inflation. 8 

A Question of Tactics 

On August 28, 1941, by Executive Order No. 8875, OPACS became 
OPA, with Leon Henderson sole Administrator. Frank Bane, as 
Director of Field Operations, began to plan for field needs. Civilian 
supply was transferred to the Office of Production Management, and 
Miss Elliott was left in OPA, as she said, “with no designated place 
in which to hang up the consumer hat.” 9 

From the first days of the NDAC some members had openly 
expressed the opinion that consumer interests, with their emphasis 
on economic and social betterment, had no place in a defense program. 
Antagonism to the consumer program and its “social worker” sponsor¬ 
ship grew stronger as the war tensions increased. This was evident 


8 Data obtained from the consumer information file of the Consumer Relations Section, 
and general files. 

9 Letter, Harriet Elliott to John S. Kier, Deputy Administrator, OPA, September 22, 1941. 



The Groundwork 


13 


during the operation of OPACS, and at the very outset of OPA, Miss* 
Elliott relates that John E. Hamm, Senior Deputy Administrator, told 
her he did not want “the consumer name involved with the 
OPA . . . that businessmen did not want to deal with a price office- 
which had a consumer division.” 10 

A partial explanation of this seeming repudiation of the principle 
of consumer participation lies in the fact that the newly established 
OPA was operating under what Henderson called “jawbone” persua¬ 
sion. The price control act had not yet been passed by Congress and 
was being hotly debated in the fall of 1941. Business interests, lobby¬ 
ing against any price control, were quick to see and seize upon the 
threat of organized consumers. To some within OPA it seemed that 
the Consumer Division and all its works were a political liability. 
Eventually the act was passed and happily contained a clause per¬ 
mitting the Administrator “to utilize and establish such voluntary 
and uncompensated services . . . as may be needed.” Eventually 
both businessmen and consumers were included in the OPA volunteer 
structure but now in the fall of 1941, consumer participation was 
clearly not a part of the official program. 

Miss Elliott resigned in November. The Consumer Division was 
retained for another year but its emphasis was changed and it func¬ 
tioned under a political cloud. The Consumer Centers continued to 
operate for a year or more under the aegis of the local defense councils 
and the OCD. They were seldom brought directly into the OPA 
structure but they influenced it greatly. With their emphasis on 
prices, grades, and substitutes, they were, for the next year at least, 
the chief source of local information on price control. Later their 
members formed the backbone of two important groups of OPA vol¬ 
unteers, the community service members and the price panel assistants. 
Miss Elliott’s belief in local participation radiated out through the 
Consumer Division, the Consumer Centers, and the consumer interest 
committees to the educational centers, the women’s organizations, the 
minority groups, and to the small communities. It was not lost. It 
was a philosophy native to the American climate and when the need 
for volunteers arose, people everywhere i emembered that total defense 
meant participation. 


) 


10 Ibid. 















■f > ; j ' 

. 

. 






* 



































CHAPTER 

2 

The Rationing Boards 


Only a few weeks after Miss Elliott's resignation a national emer¬ 
gency forced an alteration in the agency attitude and brought volun¬ 
teers into OPA in a big way, and in operating capacities. 

On December 7 the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor shut off our 
main source of rubber. To provide for war needs and at the same 
time prevent the complete breakdown of civilian transportation, ra¬ 
tioning of automobile tires was necessary. Tire rationing meant re¬ 
strictions on every community in the country; to be successful the need 
for it had to be understood and its administration supported by the 
local communities. 

The Office of Production Management halted the sale of tires and 
on December 11 authorized OPA to undertake the inevitable ration¬ 
ing; by then only two regional offices had actually been opened. But 
Frank Bane, director of OPA’s field operations, knew his way to the 
grass-roots, and won out in a bitter internal contest over plans for 
a rationing field organization. The defense councils which he had 
established as Director of State and Local Cooperation for NDAC 
and which had continued under the aegis of OCD, now covered every 
town and county in the United States. Tire rationing needed to be 
set up speedily and administered locally, at the least possible expense. 
With a genius compounded of the immediacy of the situation, an 
instinctive faith in the people, and a reflex grasp toward familiar 
instruments, Bane gave the job to the local defense councils through¬ 
out the country. On December 14, without consulting OCD, he tele¬ 
phoned the Governor's office in each state saying that tire rationing 
would be necessary and asking the State government’s cooperation in 
setting up a State administrator and local boards to start the task in 
three weeks’ time. 

Each call was followed by a letter outlining a plan to organize tire 
rationing boards in “each political subdivision and county,” to man 
these boards with volunteers “selected among citizens highly qualified 

15 



16 


V olunteers in OP A 


to meet the emergency,” and to utilize the local councils of defense 
^because they already have established offices and qualified personnel.” 
He was explicit as to the line of authority and the duties: 

Such is the organization: the Federal department developing policies . . . 
and placing this material in the hands of the State defense council; the State 
defense council taking the responsibility for seeing its State is . . . organ¬ 
ized through the local councils of defense; and the various local councils of de¬ 
fense assuming the responsibility for seeing that there are sufficient boards located 
In a sufficient number of places and adequately staffed to serve their communities. 

And so we should have a local organization operating under instructions and 
regulations furnished by Washington . . . clothed with necessary authority 
to: 

1. Determine who shall receive a tire in accordance with instructions, regula¬ 
tions, and standards furnished from Washington. 

2. Issue a certificate upon form to be furnished to each applicant that the 
local board thinks is eligible for a tire. 

3. Keep records of all applicants, all rejections, and all certificates issued. 

4. Make periodic reports to the State defense councils on forms or schedules 
to be furnished. 1 

"Citizens Serving Without Pay" 

In the next few weeks several thousand people received urgent 
telephone calls from their governors and mayors; in the towns and 
-counties people signed up for the emergency, little guessing what lay 
ahead. 

On December 27 OPA sent printed application forms and detailed 
instructions by air mail to local communities. “In effect these instruc¬ 
tions charted the course of the whole program. In clear and simple 
language they stated the nature of the rubber emergency, proposed 
a rationing system to care for the most essential needs of each com¬ 
munity and showed the yoefle how by their own efforts they could set 
up . . . tire rationing boards to do the job.” 2 Nine days later, 

on January 5, 1942, tire rationing went into effect. The volunteers 
were ready. 

In January some 7,000 tire-rationing boards, covering every locality, 
opened their doors to serve the public. They were manned entirely 
by “local citizens serving without pay.” 3 This organizational feat 
was accomplished by a democratic government, using democratic 
methods, at a speed which even a totalitarian government might have 
envied. 


1 Letter of Frank Bane to the several State Governors December 19, 1941 ; copy attached 
to Tire Rationing Instruction Letter No. 2, January 6, 1942. 

2 Quarterly Report, Division of Field Operations, OPA, April 1942. 

3 Tire Rationing: How , What and, Why, Consumer Division, January 5, 1942. 



17 


The Rationing Boards 

Rationing Board Members 

The first tires were scarcely allocated before it became obvious that 
other scarcities were developing, and that if each consumer was to be 
assured his claim to a fair share, other rationing must follow. On 
January 27 OPA was designated the rationing agency for all goods 
and commodities that might be placed on the list for controlled dis¬ 
tribution at the retail level. Rationing of typewriters, automobiles, 
and sugar followed in the next few months. 

"I he rationing boards were at work. Members were nominated by 
the local councils of defense and appointed by the State governors. 
They varied from three to seven board members in a community, “citi¬ 
zens highly qualified to meet the emergency,” plus whatever clerical 
help they could borrow from the county, town, or State, or could dig 
down into their own pockets to hire, or could commandeer, without 
compensation, from friends. One member was designated by the State 
Governor as “Board Chairman,“ and upon him rested the responsibil¬ 
ity for leadership in the undertaking. 

Few people at the beginning realized the extent of the problems 
before them, the number of personnel, or amount of equipment or 
space that would be needed. So the boards were set up in any free 
space that was offered: in empty school rooms, post-office lobbies, at 
courthouse centers, in country grocery stores, and in the homes of 
board members. There was no money for equipment; sometimes the 
State or county provided cast-off furniture; more often the board 
members supplied what they could themselves. Lacking filing cases, 
they used orange crates;.lacking drawer space, they used shoe boxes; 
lacking desks, they used boards across trestles. 

The board members were sworn representatives of the Government 
and as such they had to explain the regulations to tradesmen and con¬ 
sumers. They had to pass on all the applications. Each new rationing 
program added to their already heavy load. They had signed up for 
tire rationing but they struggled through regulations on recapping and 
retreading, then on automobiles and typewriters and sugar. Many 
board chairmen gave full time and more to the job. All board mem¬ 
bers put in long hard hours night after night; a few gave up in despair. 
When one board member who was also a newspaper editor announced 
his resignation with the statement that he had received 17 pounds of 
printed material from OPA, another board member retorted that a 
soldier’s pack weighed more than 17 pounds, and that he and the rest 
of the board intended to carry on. 4 


* “Board Management in Region VII,’’ James J. Delaney, Regional Board Executive, 
OPA Bibliography, 191/0-47, item No. 10K.61. 



18 


Volunteers in OP A 


Peak-Load Volunteers 

The second major rationing job was the sugar program, scheduled 
for February, then April, and finally put into effect in May. Each new 
item to be rationed cast its shadow before it in a stream of inquiries 
to the rationing boards. Sugar rationing nearly swamped the boards 
before it went into effect. Sugar reached even further into the com¬ 
munities than had tire rationing. It entailed the registration of every 
member of every family in the country, as well as every food store 
and institutional user. In terms of space alone this was beyond the 
capacity of the early one-room or one-counter rationing offices. In 
Washington, Bane again went straight to the communities for help; by 
arrangement with the Office of Education and the school authorities in 
each State he borrowed the public school system of America. The 
second large group of volunteers for OP A consisted of the teachers 
and mothers who handled this registration at the local schools. It 
has been estimated that over 100,000 persons volunteered their services 
for War Ration Book I. For each succeeding peak-load job during the 
next 4 years the school teachers worked overtime to contribute to OP A 
as “peak-load” volunteers. 

Regular Volunteers 

With the help of the schools and the school teachers, sugar regis¬ 
tration was accomplished, but the registration cards were sent back 
to the boards to be filed, and, almost before they were received, appli¬ 
cations for home canning sugar poured in by the hundreds and thou¬ 
sands. At this period most board chairmen moved their boards to 
larger quarters (again borrowed or hired on faith in future funds), 
and sent out calls for additional volunteers. From this time on, the 
clerical or “regular” volunteers became an important and essential 
part of the board system. They served as receptionists, file clerks, 
telephone clerks, counter clerks, and some became expert enough to 
handle any part of the clerical work. 

These regular volunteers not only helped to make OPA’s funds go 
further and to interpret OPA policies to their communities, but by the 
very fact of their being volunteers, gained cooperation from a public 
not fond of bureaucrats. An early report of board work in New York 
City sums up all of these effects, and gives a hint of the administrative 
problems inherent in the use of volunteers: 

I called at 1450 Broadway and talked with Mrs. Jenney Propos, the volunteer 
head of the volunteers , . . the work there has been recognized by the Red 
Cross as a definite activity and she has an average of 60 volunteers per week doing 
20 jobs. The public respects the workers, and they have innumerable cases of an 
irritated visitor being smoothed down by the mere fact that he recognizes the 
uniforms and asks if the work is voluntary. When they are told it is, they seem 


The Rationing Boards 


19 


to gather more trust in the Government and they frequently, as a mark of grati¬ 
tude for the services rendered by the volunteer, offer donations to the workers 
for their Red Cross chapter. (These donations are not accepted.) The turn¬ 
over depends largely upon the season, the relation of the workers to their 
supervisors, and the fact that Mrs. Propos varies the jobs very considerably and 
tries to fit a worker into the type of work which she most enjoys. They stick 
best at jobs where they contact the public, or the boards, and they usually increase 
the number of days or hours which they give, as their interest gathers. Mr. 
Mayer estimates that the monetary value of the services of workers exclusive 
of the boards themselves at from $175,000 to $200,000 annually in three New 
York boards. 5 

A Change of Name 

During March and April 1942 OPA first supplied some funds for 
equipment, materials, and telephones, and for the salaries of the first 
paid clerks. In April organization officers were appointed by OPA 
to look after the physical needs of the boards. OPA was accepting 
its emergency volunteer boards as a permanent part of the organiza¬ 
tion. The position of the board chairman became increasingly im¬ 
portant. In some areas he engaged the paid personnel; in all areas he 
had to approve them, and he had the power to have them removed. 
From this time on new board members, although still nominated by 
the local council of defense, were appointed by the State or district 
OPA director. The board chairman was usually consulted about addi¬ 
tional members and his opposition, if it existed, was difficult to 
overcome. 

On April 28 the General Maximum Price Regulation was issued, 
placing a ceiling, the highest price charged in March 1942, on “vir¬ 
tually everything Americans eat, wear, and use.” 6 It required that 
the prices of all cost-of-living items be posted in the stores for cus¬ 
tomers to see, and that a copy of this list be filed with the local board 
by July 1, 1942. The local boards were to handle price as well as 
rationing. On May 25 the boards were officially designated as War 
Price and Rationing Boards. The board personnel, by now intent 
upon filing the sugar registrations and frantically trying to keep 
abreast of four rationing programs, may be forgiven if they scarcely 
noticed and failed to use the new name. Except for official corre¬ 
spondence the boards remained “Ration Boards” for more than 
another year. 

The board chairmen undoubtedly read the letter announcing a 
change of name, and the instructions which followed a few days 
later. These instructions said that, until adequate staff could be pro¬ 
vided, the boards would be asked only to distribute price materials, 


6 Report, Use of Volunteers in Region II, Mary Mason, November 1942, in volunteer files. 

6 Advance release, PM 3072. 



20 


Volunteers in OP A 


give out applications, receive filings, and forward any price com¬ 
plaints to “the appropriate OPA Office.' 7 No price staff, paid or vol¬ 
unteer, was recruited and no further official instructions were sent 
out. When the price lists began arriving in July, a few conscientious 
board members dated them and filed them away in boxes; in hundreds 
of boards harrassed and hurried clerks merely piled the lists in cor¬ 
ners. When stacks of price regulations began arriving, they too were 
piled as much out of the way as possible. In general the district 
offices, and not the local boards, handled the trade inquiries and 
requests on price. 

In the following months of 1942 the rationing program ballooned 
out to include gasoline, rubber footwear, and then coffee. The origi¬ 
nal number of board members was increased and the board chairmen 
were directed to divide them into commodity panels: the tire ration¬ 
ing panels, the food panels, the gasoline panels. 

Gasoline rationing enormously increased the work load and did 
more to test the fairness of the board members than any other ration 
program. Local pressure was very strong for the granting of “a few 
more gallons,” but local publicity threw a bright light upon panel 
activities and acted as a deterrent to favoritism. All regional his¬ 
tories bear witness to panel resistance to this pressure. Extra gaso¬ 
line for funerals seems to have been the most difficult denial the panels 
had to make, and gasoline for holiday trips the most frequent. One 
of the most amusing denials was made by the Pueblo gasoline panel: 
“An erstwhile sergeant who had returned to Pueblo to remarrv his 
former wife applied for gasoline to take his honeymoon and the board 
had to inform him that while they personally weren’t against ‘love’ 
unfortunately the gasoline regulations made no provisions for it and 
he must be denied.” 7 A newspaper in the same town, praising the 
work of the board added that any man desirous of entering an unpopu¬ 
larity contest should join the gasoline panel. 

Auxiliary Volunteers 

In order to conserve tires and gasoline, several auxiliary groups of 
volunteers were recruited to serve the public outside the designated 
OPA boards. In more than a thousand rural areas individual distribu¬ 
tion officers were appointed with limited powers. In homes or offices 
or grocery stores these volunteers stored the applications, gave them 
out on request, and advised the applicants on eligibility. These officers 
had no adjudicative powers, and all applications were returned to the 
nearest local board for processing. 


7 Record, War Price and Rationing Board No. 2, Pueblo, Colo., OPA, OPA Bibliography 
19-10-J,7, item No. 10K.64. 



21 


The Rationing Boards 


In the highly industrialized areas, plant-site and plant-area boards 
were established specifically to service the employees of a given plant 
or area. At the height of gasoline rationing there were 65 such boards 
with a total of 397 panels. In addition to these groups, over 20,000 
transportation committees within the industrial plants developed car¬ 
sharing plans and made preliminary examination of applications for 
tires and gasoline. 


The Pattern is Set 


The volunteer boards were now functioning on a full-scale basis 
sufficient to handle the rationing requirements of a great nation at war. 
The members were not yet fully aware of the enormous task ahead, 
but they knew they were in for a long pull. Their number had more 
than quadrupled. The volunteer board chairmen were responsible 
for supervision and leadership of 125,000 people and the administra¬ 
tion of 18 different rationing programs. 

As the volunteer State Tire Rationing Administrator for Illinois 
wrote in recalling these early days: 


If you were one of these men who became State tire administrators, little did 
you dream that you were launching your part in a program in seven States which 
eventually would handle applications and dole out to your neighbors scarce 
rationed commodities to the following staggering figures before the end of World 
War II which was just beginning: 

Number of appli- 

Product Quantity rationed cations 


Tires, tubes, recaps_ 28,000,000 units_ 

Automobiles_ 86,000 cars_ 

Canning sugar_ 668,000,000 pounds_ 

Bicycles__ 108,000 bikes_ 

Rubber boots_ 603,000 pairs_ 

Fuel oil_ 9,996,000,000 gallons_ 

Gasoline_ 9,885,000,000 gallons- 

Stoves_ 527,500 stoves--- 

Shoes_ 4,990,000 pairs--- 

Ration books_ 72,000,000 books- 

Institutional and industrial allotments_ 

Miscellaneous trade applications (gas stations, grocery 

stores, etc.)_ 

Miscellaneous consumer applications (furloughs, special diets, 
etc.)_ 


21, 000, 000 
80, 000 

18, 955, 000 
106, 000 
241, 000 

9, 100, 000 
78, 700, 000 
525, 000 
3, 700, 000 
29, 000, 000 

2, 034, 000 

3, 200, 000 

19, 500, 000 


Total applications approved for issuance_ 186, 141, 000 

Yes, those were the figures representing the volume of business which passed 
through your hands in our region from January 1942 through October 1945. 
As a matter of fact, your board members deliberated over, adjudicated upon and 
approved over one-quarter million applications for rationed commodities per day 
after meats and processed foods were included in the list of rationed commodities. 
Over 5,000 separate forms came into being to do the rationing process and more 



























22 


Volunteers in OP A 


than 10,000,000 pounds of paper were required to accomplish the rationing task 
in this region. 8 

The volunteers were not yet aware of the full load they would be 
expected to carry, but in this first year they proved their willingness, 
their initiative, and their capability to carry the load, or they dropped 
out. No boards failed to open, or closed, for lack of personnel. Busi¬ 
ness men volunteered in St. Louis and farmers’ wives in Nebraska, an 
Indian chief in New Mexico, and society women in New York. They 
surmounted difficulties of geography and weather; in northern Minne¬ 
sota they used an airplane to get War Ration Book I to an isolated 
group of Indians, and in the mountains of New Mexico they attended 
the board meetings on snowshoes. The people had been told “how by 
their own efforts they could set up . . . the ration boards,” and they 
did it. The program was theirs; they shouldered the responsibility, 
and once convinced of the necessity, they stayed for even the dullest 
jobs. They felt themselves a part of the country’s defense effort. 
There is in the files a penny post card from a post office in North Da¬ 
kota. On one side it is addressed to the President of the United 
States. On the other is scrawled: “The sugar books have come all 
right. Thanks.” 

This initial group of volunteers, board members, and clerical work¬ 
ers, representative citizens from the local community, serving the com¬ 
munity, explaining to the community, undoubtedly evoked the coop¬ 
erative attitude in which rationing was at first received. A public un¬ 
used to the petty annoyances and actual deprivation of wartime con¬ 
trols went to the Ration Board and was served or refused by neighbors. 
Rationing as a people’s program was accepted. The theory of the Di¬ 
vision of Field Operations was justified: 

. . . in a democracy any attempt at social and economic control must com¬ 
mand the convinced support of the great majority of citizens and . . . any 
policing of a recalcitrant minority should be done, not by a remote central author¬ 
ity, but ... by the resident officials known and respected in their commu¬ 
nities ... 9 

During the next 3 years, until the end of the program, rationing con¬ 
tinued to be handled by the local boards. Naturally enough there were 
both structural and administrative weaknesses in such a hastily de¬ 
vised plan. Some of these were remedied; for others no satisfactory 
solution was found. By and large, the original framework and pat¬ 
tern remained the same. 


8 History of Board Management Division, Region VI, Thomas L. Kelly, assistant to the 
Regional Administrator, December 1946. 

0 W. Jerome Wilson, draft of Frank Bane’s report on the Division of Field Operations for 
the First Quarterly Report, March 1942. 



The Rationing Boards 


23 


Volunteer Administration 

a 

The original three board members were appointed by the Governor 
of the State. They were usually attorneys or business men, sometimes 
they were political appointees. In none of these cases could they be 
said to have represented the community as a whole and as early as May 
1912 OPA began to remedy this situation. Field Administrative Let¬ 
ter No. 3 which transferred the appointive power from the Governor 
to the OPA State or district director also broadened the base of repre¬ 
sentation. Members were still to be nominated bv the local councils 
but the following qualifications were to be considered in making ap¬ 
pointments : 

1. They shall be fair-minded citizens who have the respect of their neighbors 
and are of known integrity. 

2. They shall be able to devote the time necessary to fulfill the work require¬ 
ments of board membership. A minimum of 8 to 10 hours a week will normally 
be required from each member. 

3. They shall have a basic appreciation of the objectives of the rationing and 
price-control programs and a sincere interest in the attainment of those objectives. 

4. They shall regard their duties as board members as a public trust rather 
than as an opportunity to promote a special viewpoint. 

5. The total membership of each board shall be such as to represent the com¬ 
munity as a whole, and to this end care shall be exercised to avoid the selection 
of all members of any one board from the same political party, sex, religious faith, 
economic level, social level, or occupation, except as under special circumstances 
such selection may be necessary and unavoidable. 

6. Membership of the individual boards should include members from labor 
and, where appropriate, members from agriculture. In the selection of labor and 
farmer members the nominating body should consult the recognized state and 
local organizations of labor and farmers. 

No person engaged or financially interested in the selling of commodities 
shall participate, as a board member, in board price or rationing activity involv¬ 
ing that field in which he is interested. 10 

Where the original appointments were faulty it took time and deter¬ 
mination on the part of the OPA district staff to change the situation. 
The expanding program, which demanded additional board members, 
provided an opportunity for adding members from other occupations 
or from minority groups, but some board chairmen opposed this vigor¬ 
ously. A glance at the chart showing occupational composition of the 
boards in July 1945 shows that eventually this defect was partially 
overcome and most boards became, as intended, fairly representative 
of the community as a whole. * 11 


10 Field Administrative Letter No. 3, May 19, 1942. 

11 For a fuller discussion see Frances H. Williams, “Minority Groups and OPA,” Public 
Administration Review, spring 1947, pp. 123-128. 


749937—47 


3 




24 


Volunteers in OP A 


A. Composition and analysis of board membership 



Number of 
boards 

Number of 
members 

Clergymen ___ . _ _____ - _ 

1,600 
4,131 

2, 269 
24,139 
1,644 
7,556 
11,061 

Consumers _ _- 

Doctors __ _ _ _ 

1,147 
3,335 
3, 612 
2,356 
1,059 
2,267 
4,577 
197 

Educators (teachers, etc.)_ _ .. ___ 

Farmers- _____ _ . _ - 

Labor (organized).. _ __ __ 

5, 951 
2,392 
3, 892 
23, 648 
755 

Labor (unorganized)_ _ _ 

Lawyers_ 

Merchants_ _ __ _ 

Negro members. .. _ _ 

Others______ ___ 

4. 590 

43, 768 



As the programs enlarged and the first unity of patriotic purpose 
weakened, it became evident that even a broad representational base 
alone could not insure strict or uniform adherence to the regulations. 
Whether appointed by the Governor or the district director, board 
members were in truth representatives of the community and on cer¬ 
tain issues they felt a closer tie to the community than to the edicts 
coming out from Washington. It was difficult for men in the oil- 
producing States to believe in the necessity for gasoline rationing and 
for those in the cattle States to believe in meat rationing. This same 
lack of conviction may have characterized the paid personnel also, and 
possibly was not entirely overcome in either group. It is a truism that 
men obey most strictly the laws in which they believe most strongly. 
The problem was ameliorated after OPA was able to provide sufficient 
supervision to assure convincing explanations when needed and to re¬ 
view performance as an additional safeguard. 

More excusable but also more difficult to overcome was the board 
attitude toward hardship cases. These board members had been ap¬ 
pointed because they were “highly qualified to meet the emergency.” 
Generally speaking they were people of experience and standing in 
the community. Early lack of instructions encouraged them to use 
their initiative and they felt they had a right to use their discretion. 
To their credit it should be said that the most frequent use of “discre- 
ion” was in hardship cases. Regardless of the regulation, board mem¬ 
bers found it very difficult to deny the application of a neighbor whom 
they knew to be in what they considered genuine hardship. OPA 
finally recognized the realities of this situation and met it in most 
ration programs by allowing to each board or area a “hardship quota” 
to be allocated at the discretion of the board. Quotas proved to be 
the most effective device for keeping local board adjudications attuned 
to national program objectives. 12 


12 For a fletai led analysis of this whole problem see Emmette S. Redford, Field Admin¬ 
istration of War Time Rationing, OPA Series of Historical Reports on War Administration. 
























25 


The Rationing Boards 

A legal observer noting this tendency to make local interpretations 
claimed that this representation of the local point of view made for 
better law enforcement in the long run. He characterized the State 
administrators and local hoards as “determined to carry out a na¬ 
tional policy but to carry it out in the light of local circumstances 
which they knew” and summed up the situation from a legal point of 
view: 

Decentralization has its disadvantages as well as its virtues; but the discre¬ 
tion and elasticy which the system affords makes for a far more general acceptance 
of the law itself than would unvarying adherence carried out by administrators 
far removed from the actual scene of administration. 13 

The incidence of departure from strict adherence to the regulations 
was seldom great enough to affect the program as a whole and 
never great enough to justify rescinding the power delegated to 
board members. To the end of the program, adjudicative action was 
reserved to them, the representatives of the local community. If a 
tire had to be denied, they denied it; if an exception was made, they 
made it; if a mistake was made, they took the blame for it. They had 
to understand, or act as though they understood, the too long, too legal¬ 
istic early regulations. There is ample evidence that they sometimes 
made their own interpretations, but very little evidence of favoritism, 

and still less of dishonesty. As the Atlanta record states: 

% 

. . . they sometimes took liberties with rationing regulations, but there were 
times when common sense and good judgment required that these liberties be 
taken. They had an immediate task before them. People were clamoring for 
their share of available commodities and the problems couldn’t wait. So those 
men rolled up their sleeves and went to work . . . 14 


13 Reuben Oppenheimer, “An Experiment in Decentralization,” Columbia. Law Review, 
March 1943. 

14 History of the Office of Price Administration in Region IV, “Chapter VI, War Price and 
Rationing Boards,” John P. Dyer. 

































, 


















































































































. 































CHAPTER 

3 

Price Impasse 


Participation at the National Level 

With rationing so firmly ensconced in the eye, and the favor, of the 
grass roots, it is difficult to understand the semiparalysis which over¬ 
took the Price Department in April 1942 when it faced the related 
problem of getting its program accepted by the local communities. 

In retrospect it should be remembered among other factors that the 
price authorities, up to the issuance of the General Maximum Price 
Regulation in April 1942, were dealing mainly with producers and 
processors, not ordinarily with retailers, and certainly not with con¬ 
sumers directly. Up to this time their immediate concern was to gain 
aceptance in the councils of government and from the business world. 
They trusted that, because consumers w r ere the ultimate beneficiaries, 
they would also be the automatic supporters, of price control. They 
knew from arduous experience that they could not take support for 
granted elsewhere. They did not want to be identified with organizing 
consumers, lest this add to their difficulties with the trade. They cast 
consumers in a passive role, thinking retailers held the key. 

The issuance of the GMPR radically changed the conditions of 
success for price control. In one of its most dramatic moves, OPA 
reached out and put a lid on prices the country over. Suddenly and 
inclusively there was a ceiling price on practically every item the 
Nation’s consumers had to buy and, willy-nilly, those consumers would 
now decide the issue at the Nation’s counters. Would they pay above 
the legal price to get scarce items; would they go into the black market 
to get choice ones? Would they support the honest merchant or the 
chiseler? The answer to these questions spelled success or failure 
for price control. 

The Price Department saw the need for obtaining public acceptance 
of the General Maximum Price Regulation. Its tf 
plans for public education. Theoretically, and for the future they 

27 



28 


Volunteers in OP A 


envisaged community participation but they did not see an active 
immediate role for it, nor did they sense the threat to the program 
from an indifferent public. They were beset by industry pressures 
and not yet fully appreciative of the contributing pressures of a 
public willing to trade in the black market. Price control was as new 
to the men formulating its policies as to the people these policies would 
affect. A politician, a social worker, a psychologist, or an advertising 
man would have sensed the imediate necessity of gaining the firm 
support of the buying public; even the most brilliant lawyer, econ¬ 
omist, or industry specialist might not. And price policy was at this 
time chiefly determined, both in its economic strategy and in its public 
relations, by lawyers, economists, and industry specialists. 1 

General Max and the Housewives 

The policy makers of OPA read and were unpersuaded by three 
pertinent documents still in the price files at this writing. The first 
of these was a favorable report on the “Effectiveness of the Canadian 
Price Control Law,” 2 under which housewives were used to check 
prices. A second report covered price checking in World War I, when 
1,439 volunteer housewives reported weekly from some 1,084 cities. 
The author concluded: 

It was believed that a profound reaction in favor of the Food Administration 
would result from this idea. [Any objections] . . . might have been an¬ 

swered by Hoover’s argument that a volunteer’s program avoided setting up a 
permanent paid bureaucracy. 

The third report at their disposal was a detailed plan for the use 
of local boards in price as well as rationing. 3 This report by John 
H. Sly of Princeton advised care “to avoid local witch hunts,” but 
insisted that successful price control must be “considered as a program 
of local citizen participation in a Federal function.” Reminding 
the Policy Committee of the prohibition experience, where lack of 
community support made law enforcement almost impossible, he 
advocated community education through community participation. 
Organizationally he advised one operating unit for rationing and 
price: “The Price Control and Rationing Board.” He saw the per¬ 
sonnel of the boards as consisting of: 

(1) A board chairman (volunteer). 

(2) Price panels and rationing panels of board members (volun¬ 
teers) under the chairman. 


1 See Consumer Division Quarterly Report, Sessions to Hamm, March-September 1942. 

2 Research Division, OPA, April 27, 1942. 

3 Memorandum, John F. Sly, consultant to OPA, Princeton University, to Robert E. 
Sessions, Consumer Division, OPA, “Administrative Control of Retail Prices and Rationing ” 
February 27, 1942. 



Price Impasse 


29 


(3) Price wardens and rationing wardens (volunteers attached to 
the panels), educational emissaries of good will to the retailers and 
the community. 

(4) Clerical aid necessary to both programs. 

(5) A paid district supervisor, the Federal representative charged 
with training and supervision of the wardens. 

Sly built up the functions of the price board members, seeing them 
as a channel for neighborly persuasion in the adjustment of com¬ 
plaints. He emphasized and dignified the work of volunteer checkers 
or “price wardens,” believing them to be the most important instru¬ 
ment in community education. These wardens were to be volunteers: 

Similar to air-raid wardens . . . recruited among well-known citizens and 
selected for tact, integrity, and knowledge of the community . . . informed 
of the responsibility and dignity of their position, provided with an insignia of 
office, and intrusted with inspectional and educational duties. 

Sly explained these duties, broadening the conception of price check¬ 
ers in World War I to include the education of retailers, adjustment 
of minor complaints, and maintenance of a high degree of community 
support. He gave them insignia to identify them to retailers, and 
thereby preclude any charge of “snooping.” He added supervision 
from the Federal office. Eventually most of his recommendations 
were adopted, but they did not find favor with the Policy Committee 
in April 1942. 

Instead, the Policy Committee circulated its own plan: “Consumer 
Participation to Make the General Ceiling Work.” 4 This plan an¬ 
ticipated “a powerful urge on the part of the consuming public to 
participate in making the plan work.” The urge must be channelled, 
consumers must be made to realize that “novel and difficult burdens” 
had been placed on the retailer but that “no corresponding burden” 
had been placed on the consumers. Consumers must be lenient and 
patient. The necessary price checking would be done by “professional 
shoppers,” and any “self-appointed price policemen should be identi¬ 
fied as fifth wheels and trouble makers.” 

Accordingly, a press release of April 30, 2 days after the issuance of 
the GMPK, gave as its first point in a “Guide for Housewives”: “Don’t 
Try to be a Price-Policeman.” 5 In a press conference the same day the 
official position was explained as “almost precisely opposite to that of 
Canada in respect to the use of or calling on, housewives ... to 
occupy a role as personal policemen.” 6 


4 “Confidential” Memorandum, mimeographed, April 29, 1942. 

6 PM 3133. 

6 Press conference, April 30, 1942, Information files. 



30 


Volunteers in OP A 


Housewives were not to be used as volunteer price wardens, and 
housewives were not to do any self-appointed price-checking. House¬ 
wives, the women who do 80 percent of the Nation’s retail buying, were 
publicly warned against “policing” the prices of the things they 
bought. 

General Max and the Local Boards 

During this period the Price Division not only warned against check¬ 
ing of retail stores by housewives, but also failed to urge the appoint¬ 
ment of price members (similar to ration members) at the local boards. 
Thus “General Max,” the first price-control regulation to reach the 
community, was presented to the public without either local board or 
community sponsorship. 

It is frequently said that the local boards rejected the price program. 
Certainly by 1943 they were antagonistic, but in the spring of 1942 their 
response was only an understandable indifference. The volunteers 
were absorbed in programs on which they had specific instructions and 
in which the public demanded immediate service. It is not surprising 
that they had slight interest in a new, complicated regulation not defi¬ 
nitely assigned to them. The three official documents sent to the boards 
to announce the new program were not calculated to arouse their en¬ 
thusiasm about price control. 

These “letters,” sent within 3 days of each other, were the only 
national office communications on price, to the boards, for nearly a 
year. The first letter, on May 25, from Leon Henderson, announced 
the change of name and function. After a general introductory para¬ 
graph (which did not mention the price program), this letter said : 

The fine work which yon have done in the past months now leads us to place 
upon you not only increased responsibilities in the rationing program but certain 
important responsibilities in administering the over-all price control program . . . 
[these were not explained] ... At the same time the local boards are being 
officially designated as War Price and Rationing Boards. 

An accompanying “organization” letter 7 covering five printed pages 
described the general qualifications of all board members, their ap¬ 
pointment, and their functions. Price was mentioned once in the five 
pages: “A third panel may deal with the retail price control program.” 

The third letter sent was entitled “Preliminary Instructions.” 8 It 
said that “ultimately” the boards would be expected to “assist in check¬ 
ing retail prices” and “in obtaining compliance.” In the meantime, 
until adequate staff could be provided, the boards would be asked “to 
perform only the most urgent tasks:” (1) to distribute material, (2) 


7 Local Board Administrative Letter, No. 1. 

8 Local Board Price Letter, General Instruction No. 1. 



Price Impasse 


31 


to receive price lists, (3) to supply applications to retailers, (4) to 
forward complaints to “the proper OPA office.” 

There were only three slight references to price duties as differ¬ 
entiated from rationing duties, and four specific tasks, all of them 
clerical. To the over-worked ration board volunteers, this could 
scarcely have seemed an inspiring program. The “ultimate” func¬ 
tions presumed price members at the local boards, but no dynamic 
appeal went out from the national office asking citizens to undertake 
the price functions as they had the rationing ones. No directive came 
from the Price Division on recruiting the additional volunteers. No 
person was specified to do the recruiting. A concrete, evocative pro¬ 
gram was not put into effect for another year, though several months 
were spent on elaborate plans, ultimately abandoned, for a gigantic 
registration of all retailers by boards. By October 1942, paid price 
clerks were appointed for a few boards, presumably to file the cost- 
of-living price lists stacked in the corners here and there. After the 
filing was done, or before it, the new clerk was gratefully absorbed 
into the rationing work and had no time to read the price schedules 
which were piling up on the shelf. The local boards did not so much 
reject General Max; they ignored it. 

Not only the boards but the communities around the boards failed 
to become acquainted with the GMPR. Participation is a two-way 
affair and the housewives who might have volunteered for the new pro- 
. gram went on their way, busy with rationing, or air-raid duties, or 
war-block service. They read in newspapers of the General Maximum 
Price Regulation, but their only direct contact was in the noncommittal 
presence of retailers. They read of, but seldom saw, the cost-of-living 
price lists; they were first puzzled, then uninterested, then oblivious. 
At this stage few of them saw any connection between the prices they 
paid in stores and the “Price” in big letters over the ration board. A 
few inveterate consumers, noting prices higher than those of March, 
sent complaints to the ration board. These were doubtless forwarded 
to the proper OPA Office. There is no record that they were ever 
answered. Even had the national office not deliberately discouraged 
participation in price, in most regions there was no avenue by which 
it could be given. Volunteers offering themselves at the boards were 
absorbed at once by rationing. And they explained rationing to the 
neighbors. But what was Price? Who knew about General Max? 
Not the volunteers. And not the neighbors. 

Name Calling 

The GMPR became legally effective at the retail level on May 11. 
But some prices continued to rise. Both the national office and the 
newspapers questioned whether retailers were abiding by their March 


32 


Volunteers in OP A 


ceiling prices, whether in fact they even understood what was required 
of them. By law no retailer could charge more for a given article 
than his selling price in March 1942. By law he must keep at his 
place of business a record of his March prices. In addition he must 
file with OPA and post in his place of business a list showing the March 
selling price of all items designated as “cost-of-living” items. Only a 
comparison between cost-of-living price lists and prices on the shelves 
could prove whether an individual store was obeying the law. 

In June the Price Department announced a national survey of retail 
outlets, “mainly for educational purposes.” 9 The question immedi¬ 
ately rose: who was to visit the Nation’s two million retail outlets? 
Here surely was an opportunity for participation, and the literature 
of the women’s organizations at this time shows they were aware of 
and ready for the task. Price Department thinking on the subject 
had not changed. Price Administrator Leon Henderson had said this 
was “the people’s battle,” but his deputy administrators talked in dif¬ 
ferent tones. Dexter M. Keezer, Deputy for General Services, openly 
repeated his opinion that: “Self-appointed price policemen should be 
identified as fifth wheels and trouble makers.” 10 Kenneth Galbraith, 
Deputy Administrator for Price, talked of eight to ten thousand paid 
inspectors and publicly promised the retailers that “no Gestapo of 
volunteer housewives” would be used for the survey. 11 Congress 
picked up the name-calling and “Snoopers!” echoed through Capitol 
Hill. But Congress, no fonder of paid inspectors than it was of vol¬ 
unteer snoopers, made a deep slash in the OPA budget, and “thousands 
of paid inspectors” were automatically eliminated from the argument. 

The financial handwriting on the wall made an impression. On 
July 1 Dexter Keezer wrote that he had been misunderstood, that no 
more time should be wasted on the nonexistent issue of whether vol¬ 
unteers were to be used, that his only concern was one of having 
them properly trained. Price volunteers were accepted as a necessary 
aid in the price control scheme but the Price Division was still slow 
to work out the possibilities inherent in local participation, and for 
another 8 months failed to offer a program to the field offices. 

The vacillation and name-calling of this first 6 months of price 
control made recruiting of price wardens or price panel assistants 
a difficult problem from then on. On April 15,1942, President Boose- 
velt by Executive order had amended the directive of the Office of 
Civilian Defense. This agency was now authorized to: 

Assist other Federal agencies in carrying out their programs by mobilizing and 
making available to such agencies the services of the civilian population. 


9 Washington Post, June 5, 1945. 

30 Speech before Congressional Wives, June 1942. 

lx Washington Post, June 5, 1942. 



Price Impasse 


33 


But even the Office of Civilian Defense was affected by these early 
OPA attitudes. They never wholeheartedly recruited for the service 
of price checking. National civic organizations refrained from 
urging their members to volunteer in a service so bitterly criticized 
both within and without the agency. The terms “price policemen”, 
“Gestapo”, “trouble-makers”, and “snoopers” lingered on in the pub¬ 
lic mind and were not conducive to successful recruiting. They were 
not in fact conducive to participation in any form. Public policy 
at this time dealt a blow to participation from which the price 
program never wholly recovered. Many a housewife, who later ac¬ 
cepted a juicy steak at more than ceiling price, excused herself with 
the thought that reporting the violation would be “snooping.” 

The Consumer Division Demonstrates 
Richmond Fights Inflation 12 

The first national step toward community participation in price 
control was made by the Consumer Division, which still retained its 
early orientation and some of its social worker and public relations 
staff, and was under violent criticism in congressional quarters. The 
Division developed a plan to show what a community could and would 
do for itself to further the objectives of price control. The city of 
Richmond was invited to make a demonstration. The avowed objec¬ 
tives were: (1) a drive by the community to help all retailers complete 
their compliance with the requirements of the General Maximum 
Price Regulation; and (2) a drive to get the largest possible number 
of families in Richmond to understand,, to sign, and to keep the con¬ 
sumer pledge not to buy above ceiling prices. In the words of a 
Division observer, 

Here was a campaign on economics. It had none of the emotional wallop of 
a recruitment drive for the Navy, which it immediately followed. None of the 
heart throb (and the years of familiarity) of a community chest campaign. None 
of the fireworks of a political election. 

And Richmond, like any large community, is sprawling and uncoordi¬ 
nated ... a collection of civic bundles of every size and shape, only loosely 
tied together. 

In its particular way Richmond has its dividing lines ... its tensions ... its 
factionalisms .... and its own way of handling them. 

What, then, pulled Richmond together that so much could happen about Price 
Control between August 20 and 29? 

It was not the Consumer Division . . . though the Project Staff of the Con¬ 
sumer Division came to Richmond with a complete set of suggestions for com¬ 
munity action. It ioas not the OPA in Viriginia . . . though the entire State 


This demonstration was carried on simultaneously in Richmond, Va., and Charlotte, 
N. C. 



34 


Volunteers in OP A 


Office gave unstinting! y of its efforts and support throughout the campaign. It was 
the immediate , complete response of the leaders of the community to the concept 
of a program on price control conducted By the community as well as In it. . . . 13 

This concept of the community and of participation included both 
retailers and consumers; it included the mayor and the merchants; it 
included trade and civic organizations; Negroes and whites, labor and 
the churches and the schools; and it included the housewives. 

Certainly there were specific obstacles to be overcome in Richmond. 

There were suspicions of “Washington” . . . suspicions that consumers might 
be “aroused” . . . suspicions that “snoopers” might be loosed on the town. 

But significantly, these suspicions were only early weeds, and quickly uprooted. 

The weed-killer was simple enough. It was no more than the explanation that 
here was a campaign to be conducted by the community as well as in it . . . by 
the community, not by “the Government.” 

Once that was made clear, suspicion turned into cooperation . . . and the rest 
was action ! 14 

Action of the 9-day campaign resulted in 4,320-column inches of 
locally initiated publicity; 14 radio programs, 85 special spot announce¬ 
ments ; 2,323 retail stores visited by a trained corps of 370 volunteers; 
a 3-day clinic for local merchants conducted by merchants; 60,000 con¬ 
sumer pledges signed; and “1,300 people (exclusive of press, radio, and 
local officials) participated directly in making this campaign a success.” 

The results would seem to prove the validity of the technique. Rich¬ 
mond did participate; a city could mobilize its citizens for price control 
as for any other civic need, could mobilize for OPA the necessary “sup¬ 
port of the great maj ority.” But there were no further demonstrations. 
The plan met with disfavor at the national office where its sponsorship 
was unwelcome. The Consumer Division was a political liability. It 
was presently reorganized as the Community Service Division in the 
newly created Information Department. The value of the Richmond 
experience was lost to other cities, 15 and even for Richmond the experi¬ 
ence v ent slightly sour. The promised follow-up programs were never 
sent; the 3*0 volunteers, hailed by press and radio, were never organ¬ 
ized into a continuing program, never incorporated into the work of the 
local boards. 

Whose Volunteer Plan? 

% August 1942 the hard necessities of the budget, plus widespread 
violations of the GMPR, were convincing the OPA as a whole that 
some type of community participation in price control was a necessity. 

13 Staff report, Victor Ratner, Consumer Division, August 194° 

14 Ibid. 

15 In 1944 and 1945 the Information Department revived this technique for its various 

s ogan campaigns. But all too frequently the campaigns were divorced from the volunteer 
work at the local boards. 



Price Impasse 


35 


The Price Department, however, had made no positive move toward 
sending out any program, when on August 18 the Legal Division pre¬ 
sented a plan for taking over both the volunteers and the local boards. 
At once there was a storm of protest. 

The Legal Proposal 

The Legal Division, through its New York Regional Office, had 
already made an excursion into the use of volunteers. Early in June, 
under the direction of Walter Gellhorn, Regional Attorney for OPA, 
100 volunteers were recruited from patriotic and service organizations, 
given an hour’s training, and sent out to buy gasoline without their 
ration cards. In the space of a few hours they uncovered hundreds of 
violators. Neither the volunteers nor their organizations enjoyed the 
experience, 16 but the Legal Division had its evidence. 

In August, there was widespread disregard of GMPR, and the 
Legal Division was short on investigators. They remembered the 
New York gasoline cases. They proposed to take over the volunteers 
and they presented a plan which from the operational aspect left 
little to be desired. It retained and' elaborated on the recruiting, 
training, and supervision outlined in the Sly plan. It rounded out 
the functions of the price panels, and it added an invaluable docket 
system for recording the action on complaints; but there was no 
mention of identifying insignia, only slight mention of the education 
of retailers, none of the maintenance of community support; The 
volunteers were to be trained by the Legal Division, supervised by the 
Legal Division, and used for enforcement. This was not a plan for 
voluntary compliance, nor neighborly persuasion; this was not com¬ 
munity education. It was enforcement. The other divisions sprang 
to action. Within the next few weeks three full-fledged volunteer 
plans were submitted, and four departments, Price, Legal, Board Op¬ 
erations (the Office already handling local boards and rationing 
volunteers), and Personnel were contesting jurisdiction over the 
future price volunteers. 

Protests 

Within the first week Galbraith wrote a protesting memorandum to 
Hamm: 

The functions of the price wardens should not be restricted to, or even primarily, 
a matter of enforcement. 

Neither good public relations nor good administration is served by placing 
them under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Legal Division. 

. . . there appears to be some question . . . whether volunteers could be re¬ 
cruited through the Office of Civilian Defense on this basis. 


ie Now York Times, June 7, 1942. 



36 


Volunteers in OP A 


Specific responsibility for the content and for technical supervision of the 
particular projects must fall on the technical division primarily concerned with 
any given project. 

Galbraith’s memorandum was accompanied by the Price Depart¬ 
ment proposal on the “Use of Volunteers as Price and Pent Wardens.” 
Galbraith made a clear and hitherto unrecognized distinction between 
the administrative and the technical phases of any use of volunteer's. 
He reiterated his opinion that specific responsibility for technical 
supervision and training must rest with the technical division pri¬ 
marily concerned and he advocated placing responsibility “for recruit¬ 
ing, assigning, and supervising, directly on the organizational staff 
at the various levels.” Aside from this the Price plan added nothing 
to the various other plans already presented. 

The Organization Planning Office presented a memorandum 17 not 
only opposed to the legal plan, but to any type of adjudicative func¬ 
tion for price panels. Yet some of its postulates eventually crystal¬ 
lized the functions of the early price panels. Their September memo¬ 
randum said: 

It is contended here that the primary approach should not be legal. . . . 

but should be negotiatory. The problem is not to punish people for errors, nor 
to construct an elaborate adversary procedure for the settlement of what are 
likely to be large numbers of minor matters. It is rather to secure compliance 
with price regulations as expeditiously as possible and to use the process of 
settling complaints as an important administrative device for educating both 
retailer and public to the requirements of the price program. 

And again: 

It is here reaffirmed that . . . compliance is a price administrative func¬ 
tion, and that the process is not one of snooping and clubbing but of understanding 
and correcting. 

Board Operations, following Galbraith’s distinction between admin¬ 
istrative and technical functions, was content to offer a “Procedure on 
Volunteer Assistance” accompanied by a memorandum pointing out 
that regardless of whose plan was accepted, the responsibility for 
local boards and local board personnel, paid or volunteer, belonged to 
the Office of Board Operations. 

The Volunteer Viewpoint 

The “Procedure,” by Mrs. Dorothy Fredenhagen of the Volunteer 
Assistance Unit of Board Operations, was the first attempt to con¬ 
sider the volunteer contribution from the point of view of the volun¬ 
teer. It was, in fact, the first recognition of some of the basic differ- 


17 Memorandum, Harvey F. Pinney, 
September 25, 1942. 


“Price Control Administration at the Local Level,” 



Price Impasse 


37 


ences in the problems of employing paid and unpaid workers. It was 
the first recognition that workers whose primary job lay elsewhere 
might be limited as to choice and amount of time. And it was the 
first recognition that people who gave their time through motives of 
patriotism rather than self-interest should be accorded a primary 
choice as to type of work, a knowledge of the background of the work 
(as well as its technical requirements), and a recognition for the re¬ 
sults achieved. 

The procedure did not meet with an enthusiastic reception. Most 
of the OPA staff involved in these discussions were themselves un¬ 
familiar with volunteer techniques and lumped all personnel problems 
in one. In addition the procedure allocated to administrative super¬ 
vision considerably more authority than any operating agency was 
willing to concede to it. Finally, as long as the price-legal controversy 
over jurisdiction was unsettled, no administrative procedure was 
likely to receive serious consideration. The total result was a con¬ 
tinuing neglect of the underlying problems in volunteer participation. 
Recruitment and retention turned out to be the major headaches of 
of the volunteer program for the next 2 years. Acceptance at this 
time of the basic principles of the Fredenliagen procedure would have 
gone a long way toward curing the situation. Instead, Administra¬ 
tive Order 65 transferred all volunteer-assistance from Board Opera¬ 
tions to the jurisdiction of the Personnel Division and in the ensuing 
personnel shifts the procedure was temporarily side-tracked. One of 
its basic points, however, i. e., that volunteers should be supervised by 
volunteers or someone with volunteer experience, was picked up by the 
California Regional Office, where it brilliantly proved its worth within 
a few months. 

Information’s Channel to the Grass Roots 

On November 2, 1942, a Board Administration Letter, apparently 
uncontested and almost unnoticed, authorized volunteer community 
service members for the local boards. The Information Division 
quietly achieved its own channel to the grass roots. According to the 
directive, the community service member was to be appointed “after 
consultation with the State information officer” and “shall be respon¬ 
sible for providing the community with accurate information on the 
programs and policies of the Office of Price Administration.” On 
December 24 this authorization was supplemented by a joint statement 
of the Office of Price Administration and the Office of Civilian De¬ 
fense. Where consumer committees of the local councils of defense 
were still in existence they were to become a part of, or have a liaison 
member on, the community service committee of the local OPA boards. 


38 


V olunteers in OP A 


Some information officers were not interested in pushing the appoint¬ 
ments and some district directors disapproved of allowing volunteers 
to give out information. Scarcely more than half the local boards 
ever had community service committees (the total membership for 
the country reached only 16,000 in July 1945), but their influence was 
far greater than their numbers would suggest. An aggressive in¬ 
formation officer plus an active community service committee seldom 
failed to create an atmosphere favorable to OPA. 

Stalemate 

The main price-legal controversy w T as complicated on October 12 
by an interpretation from the Office of the General Counsel in which 
he gave to the Legal Department full responsibility for compliance as 
well as enforcement. Neither department could proceed until this 
point was settled. 

In the last 3 months of 1942 only one positive step was made toward 
community participation in price control. Henderson personally and 
publicly invited the cooperation of the housewives. He asked them to 
keep a record of the prices they paid for food for one week; then: 

Once the list is complete take it with you when you go marketing ... If you 
think an item is being sold above ceiling talk it over with the storekeeper . . . 
Then if you aren’t satisfied, report it to your War Price and Rationing Board. 

Some of the housewives of the Nation made their lists and went mar¬ 
keting, but in most cases the local board had no price wardens to 
investigate their complaints and no price panel to adjudicate them. 
Leon Henderson resigned on December 18 and his invitation went no 
further than the first gesture. Housewives were still “the forgotten 
man” of price control. 

December came and went with no final decision on jurisdiction over 
the fictional volunteers. The national office had come to virtual agree¬ 
ment upon the idea of using volunteers, but not upon the manner in 
which they could best function. 


CHAPTER 

4 

Field Experiments, 1942 


Although the national office sent out no price program in 1942 and 
the local boards were too busy with rationing to take the initiative, in 
between these two elevels, in the regions and the districts, an occasional 
executive with imagination and initiative devised an experiment in 
community price control. With only the authority of Leon Hender¬ 
son’s somewhat general reference to “ultimate functions,” 1 these vol¬ 
unteer plans got under way. 

An observer from the Price Deputy’s office, writing on November 
20, 1942, after an extensive field trip, summed up both the field situa¬ 
tion and the national office ignorance in regard to it: 

It is no secret that Washington has been unable to develop any real program 
for local board operations. It may not be so widely known, however, that pro¬ 
grams have sprung up almost at the grass roots in a number of States . . . 
these seem to follow similar patterns involving the use of panels to give 
information to retailers; to check compliance with posting and filing require¬ 
ments ; to serve as channels for the transmission to State offices of complaints 
against wholesalers and retailers; to provide information to State and district 
offices on the status of price control in the local communities; and generally to 
represent Price at the local level . . . Only one or two States" have encour¬ 
aged their local boards to perform all these functions but each job has been 
carried out successfully enough in one State or another for us to be sure that 
it will prove feasible almost everywhere with the right sort of management and 
supervision. 

The semi-legitimate character of most of these State programs makes it extraor¬ 
dinarily difficult to find out what they amount to . . . Probably almost every 
State is falsifying its reports, . . . mostly by omission of relevant facts . 2 

Not only was the national office ignorant of practices in the field, 
but regions generally had no knowledge of what was being done in 
other regions and even districts or States within the same region some¬ 
times developed extensive volunteer programs, totally unaware of the 


1 Local Board Price Letter, General Instruction No. 1, May 29, 1942. 

2 Memorandum, Owen S. Stratton, November 20, 1942. 


749937—47 


4 


39 





40 


V olunteers in OP A 


volunteer work being done a few miles away. Three regional board 
reports, written in 1946, claim the distinction of having the first price 
panels functioning in the country. Examination of contemporary 
records indicates that in two of these cases, the panels, if appointed, 
did not function long and have left no trace of their existence. 

Records of these early experiments are found in the regional office 
biweekly reports, in the Stratton field trip memoranda, 3 in the Board 
Operations’ early reports, in the closing “histories” sent from some 
regions in 1946 and 1947, in local newspaper clippings, and in con¬ 
temporary magazine articles. 4 hey are far from complete. Doubt¬ 
less many more such trial balloons are buried in the regional files, in 
the yearly reports of participating organizations, and in the patriotic 
folklore of local communities. Following then is a bird’s-eye view of 
the field experiments of 1942, as they have come to light. 

New York First 

“Volunteer assistance was decided upon as an organized project for 
Region II in May 1942, and allowed to lapse in September.” 4 

OPA Region II, with headquarters in New York City, covered New 
York State, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and the 
District of Columbia. It had over 500,000 retail outlets within its 
jurisdiction. John F. Sly became Regional Price Executive in May 
1942, and apparently moved at once to incorporate his early plan 
for Price Wardens into a unified “Volunteer Plan” for the region. 
On May 21, Sylvan Joseph, Regional Administrator, wrote to 
Washington: 

I am enclosing herewith the first draft of the plan for volunteers. This is be¬ 
ing planned in conjunction with Price, Rationing, and Consumers Division so that 
we will do a unified job of recruiting, and each separate division takes the 
training, for the portion of the volunteers services they will use.” B 

In June the regional volunteer staff was set up under the regional 
organization officer; it consisted of a regional volunteer supervisor 
and five assistants. By July there was at least one paid supervisor 
of volunteers in each State. 0 But before these staff members were en¬ 
gaged and certainly before they were acclimated to their jobs the Price 
Division decided to use volunteers to visit the region’s retailers (half 


3 Memoranda, Owen S. Stratton, August—November 1942, in files of Executive Office 
for Price. 

4 Report of New York Volunteer Program, Mary Mason, November 26, 1942. Volunteer 
files. 

B Memorandum, Sylvan Joseph, Regional Administrator, Region II, to Paul O’Leary, 
Deputy Administrator for Rationing, May 21, 1942. 

a Manuscript, “History of Volunteers,” Dorothy Fredenhagen, 1946. 



Field Experiments, 1942 


41 


a million of them!) on Cost-of-Living Posting Day, July 8> 1942. 7 
This project called for more than a skeleton staff. Three hundred field 
representatives, paid employees of OPA, were detailed, trained, and 
sent to local communities all over the region, each to recruit, train, and 
organize the volunteers of a specific locality. Preceded by telegrams 
to the mayors, supplied with statistics on the number of stores and the 
population, they recruited through the local OCD and other com¬ 
munity agencies. The training was done in free auditoriums; the 
volunteers were given written instructions for themselves and printed 
bulletins for the retailers. They were each given an identifying 
badge, and a report form to return to New York with the badge. 
Recruiting and training took about 3 weeks. During the whole period 
the program was supported by a vigorous publicity campaign. The 
goal was 50,000 volunteers, and 35,000 were actually recruited. Thus, 
even in the midst of the name-calling in Washington, Region II was 
able to recruit through the mayors and the local organizations 35,000 
housewives who, wearing badges of identification and armed with 
bulletins explaining the posting requirements, called on some 300,000 
retailers and invited them to go to their local War Price and Ration 
Boards for further information. 

In discussing this project at the Chicago Regional Price Executives’ 
conference in Chicago, 8 Sly reported that it was. a great success from 
the public relations standpoint: The regional office had established 
important contacts with key people all over the region. They had 
received favorable publicity in both the local and metropolitan press. 
Even the movies and the radio had taken note of and reported favor¬ 
ably on the volunteer participation. But he expressed doubt on two 
other points. He questioned whether there would be any appreciable 
gain in compliance with posting requirements from store visits which 
were limited to the distribution of materials and an explanation of the 
posting requirements. He also doubted whether the region would 
have put in all this effort had they known beforehand “that there was 
no hope at this time of going ahead on ... a permanent local or¬ 
ganization in which to tie [the] nucleus of volunteers.” 

The next, and final, large volunteer project under the New York 
plan was in connection with the registration of landlords in defense 
areas. The Rent Division 

outlined the work to the regional volunteer assistance staff; the dates when it 
was to be carried out, and the number of workers needed . . . the volunteer 
assistance supervisors took the lead in the recruitment of workers . . . planned 
the training meetings . . . [used] local volunteer chairmen . . . and handled 
the publicity. The Rent Division undertook instruction at the meetings . . . 


7 Report, Mary Mason, New York Regional Office, November 1942. 

8 Report, Meeting of Regional Price Executives, Chicago, Ill., July 1942. 



42 


Volunteers in OP A 


In the 4 to 6 weeks’ operation, volunteers contributed 100,000 hours 
and accurate registrations rose from 50 to 85 percent in the specific 
areas. 

The New York Regional Office conducted two large scale operations 
in the use of volunteers, well-organized by the agency and well-re¬ 
ceived by the trade, economical for the agency and at least in rent 
successful in obtaining increased compliance. None of the reports 
explain why there “was no hope ... of going ahead” but the epitaph 
of their plan is written in a few more lines from the November report: 

From August on [the work] was soft pedaled . . . operations were not sup¬ 
ported by a national volunteer policy . . . the staff was disbanded and the 
work dropped. 

Officially, the New York plan was at an end. Actually, later records 
show that a few far-sighted district officials, having found the volun¬ 
teers, held on to them. In Newark, Camden, Trenton, Baltimore, and 
Syracuse, price panels were appointed and persisted more or less 
actively from the summer of 1942 on. Camden even had its volunteer 
wardens who visited the local merchants, checked their prices, and 
helped them with their posting problems. 9 

The New England States 

Region I, according to a national office report, “has inadequate 
control over its State Offices . . . they tend to go their own ways.” 10 
And their own ways were as different in connection with volunteers 
as in other matters. Both industrial and rural New England were 
keenly aware of price control and equally determined to handle it 
themselves without “foreign” interference. Few other generaliza¬ 
tions can be made but it should be noted that at a time when the na¬ 
tional office was still in dubious debate over any use of volunteers in 
the price program, each of the New England States was working out 
its own solution through local democratic processes. 

Little OPA’s 

In Rhode Island, the smallest State, the price panels were the most 
authoritative and effective in the country. Rhode Island appointed 
its price panels shortly after the Henderson directive of May 1942. 
After some months’ experience in which the operation marked time 
on clerical work, the State Price Executive, George H. Arris, decided 
that Rhode Island volunteers were capable of more important func- 

9 Edith Ellsworth, the Camden Price Executive, laler became Price Panel Coordinator 
for all of Regie n II. 

10 Stratton reyort, November 17, 1942 



43 


Field Experiments, 1942 

tions. A former newspaper man, imaginative and resourceful, he 
turned his panels into “Little OPA’s.” He held training schools for 
price members. He issued a manual of procedural charts which 
graphically divided the panel meeting into its three functions: 

First hour—Open to the public: To receive questions and complaints and 
distribute material. 

Second hour—Closed to the public : For hearings on complaints. 

Third hour—Closed to the public: For board conference . 11 

He imbued these panels with the belief that price control was a war 
measure essential to the welfare of the country, but fundamentally, a 
community problem to be handled by the community. Then he gave 
them authority, promised them State office backing, and urged them 
to use common sense. 

The story of the Rhode Island panels has been dramatically told in a 
popular magazine. After a typical panel “hearing,” the “violator” 
gets up to leave, and the chairman admonishes him once more: 

“You’re square all right, John,” the chairman replied earnestly, “but I think 
you’re careless, too. Gosh-hanged careless. The Government don’t write these 
rules just for the fun of writing them. We got a war on. We got rules for the 
Army and we got rules for the civilians. And if the Army don’t pay any more 
attention to the rules than you have, we’ll lose the war tomorrow. Go back home, 
John, read that regulation and get your butter prices down where they belong.” 

John got up to leave. 

“And don’t forget to file them prices with us,” Bassett added. “Let’s have ’em 
tomorrow night.” 

“Now, wait a minute, Harry. That’s going to take time. I got to figure all 
them mark-ups over, and I’m danged busy. It’s going to be pretty inconvenient 
to do that tomorrow.” 

“I got a boy over in Tunisia,” Harry said solemnly. “It’s going to be pretty 
inconvenient for him to stand up and get shot. He may have to do that tomorrow 
too * * * Good night, John .” 12 

Maine 

With a population of 847,000, Maine had 50 War Price and Ration¬ 
ing Boards with four panels of 3 members each. “Maine has had a 
price panel on each and every local board since way back last summer; 
we have accomplished in one way or another every objective outlined in 
Memorandum 163, and in some cases more.” 13 This report was made 
in 1943 when the national price program was launched but the Maine 
panels, like those of Rhode Island, had obviously been in operation 
since the summer of 1942. 


11 See appendix for copies of Rhode Island charts. 

12 J. Howard Rutledge, The Little OI’A : Saturday Evening Post, May 15, 1943. 

13 Biweekly report April 29, 1943, P. II. Vose, State Price Officer, to George It. Taylor, 
Regional Price Executive. 



44 


V olunteers in OP A 


Maine’s most publicized achievement occurred on September 28, 
1942', when the price panel of Portland held a “Businessmen’s Price 
Meeting” to which they invited all retailers of the State. 14 

Purpose of the meeting: to further educate businessmen in Community and 
Service Price Regulations. 

They invited 40 Portland businessmen representing 20 trade groups 
to act as a steering committee. 

Purpose of the committee: (1) to secure mass attendance at the meeting, (2) 
to serve as a permanent businessmen’s advisory committee to the Portland 
price panel. 

Several thousand invitations went out and 1,100 retailers attended. 
After the opening addresses the audience was divided into 7 trade 
groups and each group held a clinic for the study of its own regulation. 

The Maine price panels not only went out after the businessmen, 
but they also reviewed the maximum price lists to be sure the business¬ 
men understood and had complied with the filing requirements. There 
is no record that they made a corresponding check of posting within 
the stores or that, as in Rhode Island, they held hearings on prices 
that were out of line. But in the three largest cities, Portland, Lewis¬ 
ton, and Bangor, volunteer groups were formed after the Portland 
meeting. Toward the end of the year, Lewiston recruited “10 women 
to check prices.” Old Town had its “group of deputy women to handle 
small outlying towns.” The State Price Officer maintained that “this 
nonuniformity among panels is desirable,” but added, “it is interesting 
to note that throughout Maine all cost-of-living lists as well as service 
filings are long since 100 percent filed and 100 percent reviewed. 15 
Maine was ready for the next directive. 

Massachusetts 

In November 1942 the price panels of Massachusetts were “still 
in the state of being organized.” 16 In a State with 351 boards only 130 
price panels had been designated and these 130 had in most cases 
“been used so far for rationing or are standing idle.” 16 In addition “a 
considerable amount of consumer interest” was “being completely 
neglected.” 16 

In 1942 the Massachusetts League of Women Voters devoted one day 
of their annual conference to the subject of price control. Delegates 
from all over the State came to Boston to hear the OP A Regional Ad¬ 
ministrator and price attorney explain the provisions of the General 
Maximum Price Regulation. The week after the GMPR became 

14 The Portland Plan, Augusta, Maine, September 30, 1943. 

15 Biweekly report, April 29, 1943, quoted above. 

16 Memorandum, Owen S. Stratton, November 1942. 



45 


Eield Experiments, 1942 

effective, members of the league held mass meetings for retailers in 
various cities. They distributed material, answered questions, and 
forwarded to Boston the questions not answered by the printed mate¬ 
rial. Later the women formed price checking committees and sent 
weekly reports to the Boston regional office. The local boards had no 
interest in price matters and the regional office took no action upon 
the reports. But consumer interest, once aroused, continued, and 
under the Massachusetts Public Safety Committee of CCD the women 
reported price trends from one end of the State to the other. Even¬ 
tually price panels were organized in Massachusetts and in some parts 
of the State price panel assistants functioned successfully, but a large 
share of credit must go to the consumer committees outside OPA for 
keeping the compliance record of Massachusetts in line with that of 
her sister states. 

New Hampshire 

New Hampshire appointed price panels and attempted to analyze 
for them the differences between price and rationing: 

There are fundamental differences between the administration of rationing 
activities and price activities. The completion of a rationing task is automatic; 
when the last application has been processed and the last squawker turned 
away, then the job is done; but on price, there is no end whatsoever to the public 
ignorance which must be processed. 17 

In September the New Hampshire office prepared an excellent Manual 
for Price Panel Instruction (which required 3 visits by price officials 
to each panel), and issued a weekly bulletin to the boards, but accord¬ 
ing to a November report the panels were still inactive and the clerks 
were all busy on rationing. 18 Later records show that the price panel 
at Littleton, New Hampshire, was an exception to this observation. 
On June 9, 1943, the New Hampshire Price Executive wrote a memo¬ 
randum on the “accomplishments of the Littleton price panel” in the 
hope that it would “serve as an inspiration to the price panels that had 
not participated actively in the program.” The report points out that 
the board chairman had shown “an interest in the price control pro¬ 
gram which was exceptional among the chairmen of the 32 . . . 
boards in New Hampshire.” Under “Statistical Information” it 
notes that the first meeting had been held “about October 1942,” that 
to date it had held 104 meetings and interviewed 90 retailers. The 
population served was only 9,085, but quite evidently the panel was 
doing an excellent job of education and public relations. 


37 Price Panel Instruction Syllabus, New Hampshire OPA, prepared September 1942. 

38 Memorandum, Owen S. Stratton to Laurence C. Vass, November 1942. 



Volunteers in OP A 


46 

Vermont Works Out a Compliance Survey 

According to the October regional report, Vermont with a popula¬ 
tion of only 380,000, had 40 local boards, a price panel in every board, 
and was the first State in New England to complete its check of the 
cost-of-living price lists. 19 On November 18, the State Pi ice Officer 
visited the Waterbury price panel and worked out with them a new 
compliance program. The report of that meeting gives a complete out¬ 
line of the compliance surveys that became standard for the country 
nine months later: 

1. The panel will recruit some volunteers from the community. 

2. With help from the State Office the volunteers will be trained in the use of 
a survey questionnaire. 

3. The questionnaire will cover: 

(a) Whether cost-of-living lists are posted in the stores; 

(&) Whether cost-of-living lists have been filed with the board; 

(c) Whether a basic total price list is available in each store; 

(cf) Whether a sampling of prices on the list agree with those on the shelves. 

4. The panel will run a publicity campaign explaining that the board wishes 
to help those retailers who do not understand the regulation. 

5. A copy of the questionnaire will be run in the local newspaper. 

6. Each volunteer: 

(a) Calls on stores assigned to him; 

(&) Introduces himself to the manager; 

(c) Fills in the questionnaire ; 

(d) Invites the manager to sign it if he wishes; 

(e) Files the questionnaire at the local board. 

7. The panel will examine the survey forms, and retailers not in compliance 
will be invited to appear before the panel for a friendly discussion of the prob¬ 
lem. 

“Most retail violations,” the price officer said, “are caused by ignorance. The 
job of the panel will be to keep the retailers out of trouble by educating them.” 20 

Volunteers from the community trained for their work, publicized 
to the trade, were to visit retailers and explain the regulation to those 
who did not “understand”. Retailers found to be “not in compliance” 
were to be invited to the panel meeting for a “friendly discussion”. 
The panel was told that “most retail violations are caused by ignor¬ 
ance” and that it was their job to keep the retailers out of trouble. 
Here, stated apparently for the first time, is the whole theory of com¬ 
pliance by neighborly persuasion which the Sly plan foreshadowed 
and on which the national OPA built its program in 1943 and 1944. 

A Board Chairman in Connecticut 

In Connecticut a former volunteer board chairman, Chester Bowles, 
had been made State Director, and had concentrated on organizing 

19 Weekly report, George R. Taylor, Regional Price Executive, Boston, to Laurence Vass, 
Washington, D. C., August 22, 1942. 

20 Memorandum. Owen S. Stratton to Laurence Vass, November 1942. 



Field Experiments, 1942 


47 


and publicizing the ration boards. In the fall of 1942 he sensed that 
price control held the same possibilities and needed the same attention. 
Talking with a national office representative, he said that “The metro¬ 
politan retail price problem could be licked by using price panels re¬ 
cruited from and supported by labor unions and consumers’ groups.” 21 
Some months later he was carrying this impetus to the development of 
the price panel system for the whole country. 

Across the Country 

The Atlanta history (Region IV) records no volunteer price activity 
until late in 1943 and describes a typical local board where the least 
promising of the four clerks was put on price because “the price panel 
didn’t meet anyway.” 22 The author goes on to explain that price 
panels were appointed early in 1942 but “never used or instructed”; 
and if they did try to do anything they “got their ears pinned back by 
Enforcement.” 

The Virginia Plan 

However, in Region IV, The “Virginia Plan” was in effect by Octo¬ 
ber 1942. 23 Under this plan the three original ration board members 
were left in authority but a price advisor was appointed to help them 
and three merchant counselors were added under the “advisor” to 
instruct the merchants. The boards were already using volunteer 
specialists or advisors for each rationed commodity, and numerous 
volunteer clerical workers. Later reports indicate that these boards 
were and intended to remain industry information boards. When in 
1943 compliance activities were added to panel functions the change 
was strenuously opposed by the board members. 24 However, organ¬ 
izationally this plan was fairly sound and even in 1942 it was an edu¬ 
cational aid to price compliance. 

Spartanburg—Point Rationing 

Spartanburg, S. C., developed a type of volunteer service for OPA 
which probably had its counterpart in other Southern cities, but which 
is not mentioned elsewhere in the official records. Mrs. Jessie Daven¬ 
port, colored teacher in the colored schools, was asked to organize the 
Negro population to do their share in the new defense controls. Mrs. 
Davenport talked in the schools and in lodges and churches. In the 
summer of 1942 she organized a group of 50 women to go into the 
Negro stores and show the grocers how to post their cost-of-living 


21 Ibid. 

22 Atlanta History, local boards, p. 274. 

23 Report, Dr. Raymond B. Finchbeck, State Price Executive, to Joseph J. Spengler, 
Regional Price Executive, October 26, 1942. 

24 William Blaisdell’s report to Rowe, April 1943, on Meeting of Board Members, files, 
Executive Office for Price. 



48 


V olunteer s in OP A 


lists. As Mrs. Davenport tells the story, when point rationing was 
announced she explained it over the radio, “that Sunday morning at 
10.” Notices had been sent to the schools for the children to tell their 
parents to listen. In the radio talk she asked each listener to bring 
his neighbors to the big mass meeting in the lodge. T hat af ternoon at 
the mass meeting she again explained point rationing and told the 
people how they would be called to the schools to register, “alpha¬ 
betically,” and how they must “declare” the cans of vegetables they 
had on the shelves at home. “Lawyer Lambriglit sat on the plat¬ 
form” to clarify any points Mrs. Davenport could not answer. The 
following week Mrs. Davenport’s group of 50 volunteer women went 
into the grocery stores again, to help grocers mark the price, and the 
points, on every can in the stpres. 25 

The Price Panel in Laurel, Mississippi 

Several national office field reports refer to the work of the price 
panels in Mississippi in the fall of 1942. So far as we know the earli¬ 
est minutes of any price panel meeting are those from the board at 
Laurel, Mississippi. The first record from there dated October 13, 
1942 indicates that the panel had been operating for sometime. It 
had a working grasp of the various price regulations and was empha¬ 
sizing its educational job with the retailers. In addition it was han¬ 
dling its own publicity. Later reports show that price control changes 
were regularly recorded in the local paper. 

The file now at the National Archives contains weekly reports for 
this panel from October 1942 through October 1945. 26 Its minutes 
show two things clearly: first, the panel was working effectively under 
the General Maximum Price Regulation, and second, it was working 
within a framework of training and programming from the State 
office. In Mississippi, as in New England, a field staff officer was able 
to translate the technicalities of GMPR into terms that could be 
understood and used for price control by volunteers of the local com¬ 
munity. 

No Experiments 

Regions III and V did not initiate any experiments in community 
participation during 1942, nor do the States seem to have experimented 
on their own. But correspondence from these two regions points to 
some of the obstacles which had to be overcome before the volunteer 
program could succeed. 

In the State of Ohio (in Region III) the local boards seem to 
have been completely under the control of the organization officer and 

25 Personal interview. Mrs. Davenport later became a price clerk and then chief clerk 
of a War Price and Rationing Board in the District of Columbia. 

20 Administrative Records, Region IV, Sample City, Laurel, Miss. 



49 


Field Experiments, 1942 

lie quite evidently was not promoting the price program in the boards. 
On November 5, 1942, he wrote to “all War Price and Rationing 
Boards” 27 that the Price Division was “pressing for the immediate 
appointment” of a “price advisor” to each board, and added: 

We appreciate that several months ago we 'recommended that price panels 
be used in other programs, and that such action was taken by most boards. 
However the Price Division now feels that they must have a “point of contact” 
on each board who will be informed on the price program . . . Since little or 
no action of a decision making nature will be necessary it will not be necessary 
to appoint a price panel of three men—and one person really is preferable. 

Either the Price Division had failed to instruct and provide work 
for the earlier price panels or the organization officer was grasping 
all possible volunteers for the rationing work. It was this latter 
tendency on the part of the organizational staff which caused the price 
authorities in Washington in the following year (1943) to insist upon 
their own supervisory personnel for the boards 5 administrative super¬ 
vision had its place, but it was no substitute for technical supervision 
and leadership. 

The Regional Price Executive in Dallas (Region V) recognized 
the need for public consumer education as early as July 1942. He 
found widespread “deliberate noncompliance” among the retailers and 
felt that OPA efforts must be supplemented by “consumers revealing 
to the retailers that the consumer is interested in the price stabiliza¬ 
tion program.” But he thought the consumer should do this “solely 
as a self-interested private individual” and fervently hoped that 

. . . OPA does not attempt to train large numbers of consumers, organize 
them, or take the responsibility for them. Already, some of the enthusiastic 
ladies in consumer centers are spraying the landscape with misinterpretations 
of the price regulations. . .” 28 

The Kenosha Plan 

Chicago (Region VI) did not advise its districts on the volunteers, 
but up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the State Chairman of Civil Defense, 
and the Chamber of Commerce, and the State Price Officer of OPA to¬ 
gether worked out a plan of their own to ensure compliance with the 
law: 

The Kenosha plan provides for an educational and statistical survey of price 
posting and filing compliance by means of a door-to-door canvas of all service and 
retail outlets. 20 


27 Memorandum, Inwood Smith, State Organization Officer, Columbus, Ohio, November 
5, 1942. 

28 Weekly progress report, week ending July 10, 1942, C. W. Nichols, Regional Price 
Executive, Dallas, Tex., to Laurence C. Vass, Executive Officer for Price, Washington, 
D. C. 

29 Compliance Campaigns, issued by the Trade Relations Branch, Retail Trade and Serv¬ 
ices Division, “The Kenosha Plan,” Washington, D. C., November 6, 1942. 



50 


Volunteers in OP A 


They recruited a group of 100 businessmen, trained them in the require¬ 
ments of GMPR, and sent them on a door-to-door canvas of every serv¬ 
ice and retail outlet in the county. One thousand one hundred and 
twenty-three establishments were visited; only 48 percent had filed 
their cost-of-living lists, and only 61 percent were posting prices, but 
within 4 days after the survey was completed, U T0 additional cost-of- 
living lists were filed with the County War Price and Rationing 
Boards . . . Under sponsorship of the Chamber of Commerce, dealers 
assumed responsibility for compliance as an aid to business.” 30 

No Clerk Available 

* 

In Colorado (Region VII), as early as July, the Regional Adminis¬ 
trator urged the appointment of both price panels and consumer rela¬ 
tions specialists at the local boards, 31 but apparently no program was 
sent out. The Pueblo, Colo., history records that three members of 
the price panel were sworn in by August and held at least two trade 
meetings. The price chairman got out the cost-of-living lists and put 
each in a separate folder, but “no clerk could be spared” 32 for them and 
the panel seems to have been inactive until early in January 1943. At 
this date a price clerk was assigned to them and they went to work in 
earnest. 

California Organizes 

In California the record is clear. 

Price Panels 

Region VIII experimented first with a few panels in northern Cali¬ 
fornia. After an intensive training period the California office re¬ 
quested permission from Washington 33 to use these panel members for 
processing cost-of-living price lists. After a second wire 34 without 
response, California proceeded to take matters into its own hands and 
to organize the region. 

On December 2, 1942, the Regional Price Executive sent a directive 
to all State price officers for the purpose of establishing “volunteer 
price staffs at the local board level.” The need was clearly and force¬ 
fully stated: 

During the past few months, there has been a growing realization of the urgent 
necessity for bringing price control down to the community level . . . 

30 Ibid. 

31 Clem Collins, Regional Administrator, Region VII, Letter to All Directors Julv 10 
1942. 

33 History of Pueblo, Colo. 

33 Norman S. Buchanan, Regional Price Executive, to John Hamm, Senior Deputy Novem¬ 
ber 19, 1942. 

34 Norman S. Buchanan to Laurence C. Vass, Executive Officer for Price, December 1, 
1942. Permission was eventually given December 21, 1942, by Bass, cleared’by Thomas I.’ 
Emerson for Enforcement. 



Field Experiments, 1942 


51 


We cannot afford to delay action on this matter any longer. The tremendous 
potential power and effectiveness that is available through proper organization 
of volunteer workers at the board level, must be harnessed as soon as physically 
possible . . . 

December 20 was given as the deadline by which organization officers 
were to have all price panels appointed, and training was to follow 
immediately at meetings in key cities attended by price panel members 
from the surrounding cities. Technical training on regulations was 
to be given by price specialists at the same conferences. 

In addition to the training conferences, nine “Price Panel Bulletins” 
were outlined, to explain in detail the functions of price panels; and 
definitely establishing the limits of price panel authority. Among 
the functions were “Processing Cost of Living Price Lists,” and “Proc¬ 
essing Service Price Lists”; but all complaints and violations were 
to be transferred at once to the State offices and the directive mentions 
nothing as drastic as a panel “hearing.” 

Trade relations committees were to be set up under the supervision 
of the panels, one trade relations member to every 100 retail outlets. 
The specified functions of these committees were similar to those of 
the early price wardens but the difference in name indicates a differ¬ 
ence in emphasis 35 which became more real during the next year. 
The trade relations committees were set up as a service to the mer¬ 
chants with no implications of protection for the consumer. 

The line of authority for all volunteer work was clear and definite. 
California instituted a Board Coordinator in the district office through 
whom all administrative action had to be taken, and a Trade Rela¬ 
tions Officer through whom all technical price contacts had to be made. 

The Volunteer Supervisor 

At about this time the San Francisco district office made an experi¬ 
ment which proved its worth so rapidly that within a few months it 
had been adopted as a basic part of the regional organization. 

In December 1942 the San Francisco District Office . . . realized that someone 
who knew and understood volunteers must be placed in charge of working out a 
system for recruiting and supervising the many volunteers needed by the 88 
boards under its jurisdiction. Francis Carroll, Director, called upon the Office 
of Civilian Defense to furnish them with a volunteer specialist who could de¬ 
vote her full time as a volunteer member of his staff to establishing a suitable 
volunteer program. The OCD named Mrs. Geraldine H. Dodge to fill that po¬ 
sition. 36 

A housewife and mother with grown children, Mrs. Dodge brought to 
her position 20 years’ experience in volunteer organizations such as the 


35 Memorandum, Robert §tanton, Assistant Regional Price Executive, to Laurence Vass, 
Washington, D. C., November 20, 1942. 

39 Memorandum on Volunteer Program in Region VIII, by Mrs. Geraldine H. Dodge, 
November 25, 1943. 



52 


Volunteers in OP A 


League of Women Voters, the Junior League, and Community Chest. 
She understood volunteer problems and was willing to take time to 
place workers in the types of work to which they were best suited, will¬ 
ing to supervise them carefully until they were competent in perform¬ 
ing that work. 

Her first step was an arrangement with the Red Cross and the Ameri¬ 
can Women’s Voluntary Services, to supply volunteers for the three 
largest boards of the city. Next she recruited volunteer supervisors to 
be responsible for the volunteers the organizations supplied. She soon 
had supervisors for each of San Francisco’s 88 boards. To these su¬ 
pervisors she assigned the duties of: (1) recruiting sufficient volun¬ 
teers for that board’s needs, (2) training those volunteers in their spe¬ 
cific duties, and (3) recording the number of hours worked by each 
volunteer. Within 1 month the number of volunteer hours worked in 
the boards increased by 50 percent. Seven months later she was made 
volunteer specialist for the whole region 37 and asked to work out her 
plans for 24,000 volunteers. 

This was the first region-wide experiment in the organized use of 
volunteers on a continuous basis. It proved its value many times over 
both in the increase of hours worked by each volunteer and the de¬ 
crease in volunteer turn-over. 

By this combination of well-defined administrative and technical 
authority plus expert handling of the volunteers, California evolved 
a local board organization never surpassed and scarcely equalled in 
any other region. In spite of this superior machinery and coverage— 
or perhaps because of it—California’s early use of price panels and 
price panel assistants was comparatively tentative and timid in scope of 
function. By the end of 1942 the panels were trained, thoroughly, to- 
begin what most of the Eastern States had finished some months be¬ 
fore. The trade relations committees were set up to do an educational 
iob, “a service to the merchants,” and for a year they refused to go 
further; even as late as the summer of 1943 they refused to enlarge 
their functions to include compliance surveys or price checking. 38 But 
California’s organization became a model for the national office in 
many respects and by 1945 the California method of handling volun¬ 
teers became the accepted national pattern. 

Need for National Leadership 

By the end of 1942, although without official encouragement from the 
national office, almost all regional offices had sent memoranda to the 
district offices urging the appointment of price panels. Almost all dis- 

37 California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Nevada. 

Letter, Anne Flory, National Price Panel Coordinator, to John I. McTernan, Regional 
Enforcement Attorney, San Francisco, Calif., August 21, 1943. 



Field Experiments, 1942 


53 


trict price divisions, caught between the avalanche of new regulations 
and the wall of retailer ignorance (or indifference), had reached des¬ 
perately toward the possibility of volunteer help. And enough experi¬ 
ments had been made to prove that wherever they were asked, the volun¬ 
teers responded; that wherever they were given a definite program, 
they carried it out; and that even under the complicated regulations of 
1942, given intelligent leadership from OPA, local participation in 
price control was effective. But it should be noted that each successful 
use of volunteers, price panels or price wardens, had behind it an organ¬ 
ization staff that believed in and formulated the program. Later 
events bore out Sly’s observations at the Chicago conference that three 
conditions were necessary for the successful use of volunteers: 

First, they must be carefully selected and adequately educated to do the thing 
that we would have them do. Secondly, there must be a local structure in w 7 hich 
they could be properly and firmly fitted, and thirdly, they must be equipped 
with a permanent staff that would be able to keep such a large organization moving 
intelligently. 39 

Few States had been able to establish these conditions. Although 
effective experiments had been made in various parts of the country, 
only Rhode Island, Vermont, and Mississippi had steered panels 
through the list of “urgent clerical tasks” to the “ultimate functions” 
of an effective price panel system. No unifying price program had 
been sent out from the national office and no effort had been made to 
accomplish participation on a national scale. At the end of 1942, 
when the rationing program was being effectively administered by 
60,000 volunteer board members, price control was still only a phrase 
to the great majority of the country’s 5500 local boards and to the com¬ 
munities around them. 


39 Excerpts from Regional Price Executives Conference, Chicago, Ill., July 25-29, 1942, 
Volunteer Files. 















* 






. 

. 


■ 




























































CHAPTER 



Volunteers for Price Control 


The national leadership necessary for wide-scale community partici¬ 
pation in the price program was forthcoming in the spring of 1943. 
After a year of retail price control in which the national office had dis¬ 
couraged the consuming public and its own field staff from community 
action, a right-about-face occurred. The problem was then one of 
recapturing the attention of the public and reviving or converting the 
interest of the field staff. 

Compliance Before Enforcement 

The price-legal controversy over jurisdiction of volunteers had not 
yet been settled when, on January 20, Prentiss Brown was appointed 
OPA Administrator. On January 26 a memorandum from the Senior 
Deputy Administrator, John Hamm, 1 seemed to settle the issue in favor 
of the Legal Department; but this was revoked 2 days later. Between 
the date of this memorandum and March 16, evidence poured in from 
the field to support the price contention that OPA's first move should 
be an educational rather than a belligerent one, through the Price De¬ 
partment rather than the Legal. A field survey report made at this 
time argued that most violations were due to ignorance and confusion 
on the part of the retailer and, further, that the Hamm memorandum 
“ignores the real abiding and valuable functions which can be per¬ 
formed at the local level and saddles the volunteers with the perform¬ 
ance of duties which will not be accepted locally.” 2 The report con¬ 
cluded : “The advantages of securing a firm foundation in citizen sup¬ 
port far outweigh criticism which can be made against lay participa¬ 
tion in a regulatory activity.” Reports of this type, the continuing rise 
in food prices, labor unrest such as was dramatized in the coal fields that 
spring, increasing evidence that price control lacked both community 

1 Memorandum, To all Regional Administrators, John Hamm, January 26, 1942. 

2 Report, A. G. Antolini, Region II, to J. Kenneth Galbraith, March 11, 1943. 


749937—47-5 


55 




56 


V olunteers in OP A 


support and understanding—these among other factors in a compli¬ 
cated situation determined the Deputy Administrator for Price that 
the time had arrived for a more explicit and enforceable method of 
price control than was provided under the General Maximum Price 
Regulation. Once persuaded, Galbraith used all his brilliance and 
energy to evolve and install a program of price control in which the 
community could really participate. 

Not long after taking office Prentiss Brown received a call from an 
old friend and fellow townsman, Bruno Bitker, the OPA District 
Director in Milwaukee. Bitker, an attorney, had been a dollar-a-year 
consultant to Harriet Elliott; he believed ardently in community par¬ 
ticipation. He sketched for Brown the picture of price control locally 
administered. This was language a former elected representative of 
the people could understand. Brown promised that if his decision was 
in the affirmative he would make the first announcement in Milwaukee. 

A Belated Invitation 

On March 16, in Milwaukee therefore, Prentiss Brown put OPA on 
record for the first time as inviting the active participation of the 
women of the country, not merely as shoppers, nor even merely as com- 
plainers, but as full-fledged volunteer workers within the OPA price 
structure. He invited them to become price panel members and price 
panel assistants of the local boards, a “service to their community in 
line with the finest traditions of democracy, and perhaps without 
parallel in the history of local self-government.” 

Mr. Brown outlined for them the new plan of volunteer partici¬ 
pation : 

. . . it is our considered judgment that satisfactory administration of the regula¬ 
tions can be secured only through the development of a staff of uncompensated 
personnel functioning through the machinery of the War Price and Rationing- 
Boards. 

He announced that a price panel would be appointed to each local 
board, a group of volunteers who would serve as a center of information 
on price control and as a friendly mediator and adjuster of violations. 
A corps of price panel assistants 3 would be recruited to aid the price 
panel. Prompt consideration would be given to the complaints of 
housewives and only violations which the price panel could not adjust 
by a process of mediation or friendly persuasion would be sent to the 
district office for legal action. 

He told the women that this program was based on the assumption 
that the majority of retailers would comply with the regulations if they 


3 No longer called “price wardens.” 



V olunteers for Price Control 


57 


understood what was required of them, and that the honest majority 
must be protected from the chiselling of the minority. He presented 
this program “as an opportunity for the development of self- 
government.” 

This was a general invitation, not only to the women of that par¬ 
ticular audience, but to all the men and women of the country to partici¬ 
pate in the administration of the new program. The Price Department 
now asked volunteers to assume major responsibility for retail price 
control in the local boards. 

Whose Responsibility? 

It was none too soon. In March 1943 the cost-of-living index regis¬ 
tered 122.8, an increase of more than 10 points during the first year of 
price control. Stabilization approached a political crisis. President 
Roosevelt issued his “Hold-the-Line” order on April 8, and “rollback” 
subsidies on major foods were announced. It was in this setting that 
the Price Department undertook to put dollars-and-cents ceilings on all 
important foods, with an impossibly tight timetable for preparations. 
These fixed prices were set, some at the national office (meats and soap), 
others, called “community prices,” at the district offices. Grocery 
stores were divided into 4 groups based on their volume of sales, with 
price differentials between groups in amounts varying with the lines of 
merchandise. Under the regulation each store had to display its group 
number, as well as the OPA printed posters showing all dollar-and-cent 
prices. Here was price control the housewives could read; here was 
price control the volunteers could check. 

With the advent of community pricing, the national office assumed 
leadership of the volunteer price program. In Staff Memorandum 163, 
April 16, Brown officially presented the new plan to the regional admin¬ 
istrators, and announced that Price, not Legal, would have technical 
supervision over the volunteers. This was followed by a letter to the 
boards on April 27, 4 and one to the field staff on May 3. 5 All levels of 
the OPA staff were informed that price panels and price panel assist¬ 
ants were to be recruited at once, that they were to be used to educate 
retailers on the new food regulations, and that the district price staff 
was responsible for “technical operation of the program.” But the- 
official communications neglected to place the administrative respons¬ 
ibility for volunteers on any person or division at the district or 
regional level. This responsibility, so carefully defined (and lodged 
with Board Operations) in the volunteer “procedure” of the previous 
September, was entirely omitted in the spring directive. Who would. 


4 Price Board Letter No. 3. 

5 Field Administrative Letter No. 23. See appendix. 



58 


V olunteers in OP A 


initiate the program prior to the “technical'’ price training? Who 
was to “recruit at once’'? Failure to settle this question ac¬ 
counted in a large degree for the uneven development of the program. 

In May the new community pricing orders began to take effect and 
the national office Price Department announced the first grocery sur¬ 
vey. Where were the price panel assistants who would do the check¬ 
ing? In a few cases rationing board chairmen appointed volunteer 
supervisors, or had already done so, and requested flie supervisors to 
recruit and train price panel assistants. Occasionally alert informa¬ 
tion officers, such as those in Baltimore and Camden, having recruited 
volunteers for point-rationing “explainers” in March, continued to re¬ 
cruit price panel assistants in April. And sometimes enterprising 
community service members of the local boards, as in Mississippi, 
“took over [OCD] consumer committees as the} 6 7 were.” 6 But for the 
most part, the price officers from the district offices were forced to do 
the recruiting and the training (both basic and technical), and the ad¬ 
ministration (arranging for space, materials, records to OCD, etc.), 
or it was left undone. The official directives failed to place the re¬ 
sponsibility, and Price had neglected the local boards too long to ex¬ 
pect them to welcome extra work and new problems. 

For this reason the first national grocery survey announced by wire 
on May 6 and scheduled for May 12 and 13 (less than a month after 
the first directive of April 16), caught most districts and boards un¬ 
prepared. The newly formed Price Panel Section in the national 
office made its contribution with the completeness and speed of the 
earliest rationing instructions. On May 7, it sent to the field complete 
instructions for the “Food Program for Price Panels.” This con¬ 
tained a summary of the food regulations, instructions on conducting 
a store survey, forms to be used in this specific survey with detailed 
instructions for their use, and finally, a “Price Panel Assistant’s 
Guide” including “Suggestions on How To Make Your Visit Success¬ 
ful.'’ 7 These forms and instructions were the basic tools of the sur¬ 
vey program for the next 2 years. They set the pattern for the direct, 
courteous, informative approach which made possible the success of 
volunteer checking. However, less than one-third of the 5,500 boards 
had price panels at this time and the records seem to indicate that not 
even 10 percent of the boards with price panels had price panel as¬ 
sistants. Reports from the regions in April show that many district 
directors and some price executives were not in accord with any plan 
for delegating compliance functions to the local boards. 8 Even where 
district officers were heartily in favor of the plan the district office 


6 General Field Report, Dorothy Fredenliagen, June 18-July 5, 1943. 

7 See appendix. 

8 Decentralization Study, Vols. II and III. 



Volunteers for Price Control 


59 


price staff was too busy workingg on the new “community prices” to 
give the necessary attention to the new technique of recruiting and 
training hundreds of consumer-volunteers. The results of the survey 
were disappointing; the returns “spotty,” “incomplete,” and “in¬ 
definite.” 9 

But in two cities at least, St. Louis and Milwaukee, neither of them 
with previous price panel experience, the survey results were not in¬ 
complete and not indefinite. 

In St. Louis the district information officer used the price-watching 
committee of the St. Louis Information Center. Within a week, 180 
women were recruited, trained in the new regulation, and sent out to 
contact the city’s grocery stores. St. Louis reported on time with 
100-percent coverage. 

In Milwaukee, the City Labor Advisory Committee reported to 
Washington: 

The number of price panel assistants varies from 25 to as many as 75 members. 
They are principally women recruited from labor unions and various women’s 
and church groups. 

At each of the panel organization meetings there were from 50 to 100 men and 
women in attendance. They were from the wards and precincts located within 
the jurisdiction of their particular local board. They were obviously serious and 
earnest in their readiness,to take part in the homefront war. The meetings are 
opened by introducing the price panel members. Then the patriotic purpose of 
the panel is outlined, and the matters of procedure are aired. A brief ques¬ 
tionnaire has been prepared which is distributed to all of the assistants present. 
Each one is given the names of specific stores upon whom he is to call on the 
first check-up. The first assignment (which was completed T)y all panels in Mil¬ 
waukee last week) consisted of checking the selling prices on the principal items 
on the new community price list. 10 

This survey too, although 2 weeks late, was 100 percent complete. 

Hurdles 

Recruiting price panel assistants for 5,500 war price and rationing 
boards was obviously an enormous hurdle at this time. A few districts 
had recruited panel assistants in 1942, used them once or twice, and 
then, lacking a national program, had allowed them to drift away. 
In the spring of 1943 almost no district in the country was equipped 
to make a complete area-wide grocery survey. The Office of Civilian 
Defense was still furnishing volunteers for rationing, but OCD re¬ 
membered the snooper charges of 1942 and felt doubtful about price 
panel assistants. It took time at both the national and regional levels 


» Report of May Survey to Regional Price Executives, Kenneth Rowe, Executive Officer 
for Price, July 19, 1943. 

10 Labor Advisory Committee Bulletin, OPA Labor Office, Washington, D. C., June 1G, 
1943. 



60 


Volunteers in OP A 


to overcome this hesitance, and enthusiastic cooperation was never 
wholly accomplished in some areas. 11 Field visits from Washington 
in the spring of 1943 undoubtedly had a favorable effect upon OCD 
recruiting in the South and Southwest. 12 They reached OCD officials 
in every city in Regions IV and V, and in most places brought together 
OP A and OCD officials to thrash out the whole problem of volunteers. 
OCD had many legitimate complaints against OPA policy, or lack 
of policy, on this score, which were duly aired. 

The happy result was the appointment of literally hundreds of 
volunteer supervisors and the recruitment of thousands of price panel 
assistants for the South and Southwest. In most parts of the country, 
however, volunteers from OCD had to be supplemented heavily by 
volunteers from other sources. 

The second large obstacle between the price divisions in the district 
offices and a price program in the local boards was the lack of written 
training material. The national office at this time was not unaware 
of nor unsympathetic to the difficulties in the field. Anne Flory, 
formerly assistant to John Sly in New York, had been brought to 
Washington to work on the price panel program in the Executive 
Office for Price. In consultation with Enforcement she developed 
the forms, instructions, and “guide” for the first survey. Almost 
single-handed she developed the price panel program for the next 
year, but neither she nor the Training Branch in the Personnel Di¬ 
vision was allowed to write manuals at this time. During 1942 the 
regions had developed a marked sense of autonomy, and resented the 
thought of a national training plan. In April the Executive Officer 
for Price had thought it necessary to promise the Regional Price 
Executives that: “The national office will not attempt to provide a 
standardized pattern of price panel operations—or program—except 
in minimum terms . . .” 13 

But in spite of obstacles, the national office knew that it was 
necessary to push the program, to insist upon action, both for the sake 
of the community pricing program and for fear of losing the volun¬ 
teers already recruited. 

The Price Division Recruits 

In May the Consumer Index rose again, to 125.1, and on June 5, 
Prentiss Brown sent another directive to all regional administrators 
and district directors: 14 


11 Correspondence between OPA and OCD, volunteer files, March 1943-February 1944. 
u Field Trip Reports, Dorothy Fredenhagen, February 1943-June 1943. 

13 Memorandum to all Regional Price Executives, Kenneth Rowe by William Blaisdell, 
April 1943. 

14 Memorandum, Prentiss Brown, Administrator, June 5, 1943. 





V olunteers for Price Control 


61 


The reports I have received . . . indicate that the price panel program is no¬ 
where near on an operating basis . . . My reports are that very little progress 
has been made in the recruitment or training of price panel assistance . . . 
There are further reports that in a few offices there is still resistance to the use 
of price panel assistants in checking dollars and cents prices. 

Then the Administrator announced the next survey: 

I am holding each Regional Administrator personally responsible for having 
the Price Panel and Price Panel Assistants program in effective operation in his 
region not later than June 21 ... It is my further direction that not later than 
June 28 you should have conducted throughout every area in which community 
flat prices are now in effect a comprehensive check by price panel assistants 
of retail compliance with those community flat prices. 

The Price Divisions girded themselves for action. In four regions 
(Denver, Dallas, Chicago, and Atlanta), the price staff wrote manuals 
of procedure to cover every action from the district office level to the 
local boards and the volunteers. In Dallas the Assistant Regional 
Price Executive took 4 days out to write the 16-page manual covering 
every phase of recruitment, training, price-panel assistant survey 
action, and price-panel hearing procedure. In 3 more days the manual 
was presented to and cleared by the Information Division, Board 
Operations, and Enforcement. At the end of the week it was sent out 
over the signature of the Regional Administrator to every district and 
board in Region V. Within the *iext 9 weeks this region recruited 
and appointed 743 price panels, with an average of 3 members each, 
recruited and trained 4,954 price panel assistants, and, by the June 
28 deadline, had checked for compliance 12,743 stores. Denver, Chi¬ 
cago, and Atlanta showed almost equal compliance activity. 15 

Not all districts were successful in the June organization push even 
where procedures had already been established. The new Acting 
District Director of Springfield, Mass., writing on May 8, expressed 
himself as being fully in accord with Mr. Brown’s policies, but: 

I believe it is not always appreciated by those who are not themselves in the 
field that organizational work of this character is necessarily slow . . . 

It would perhaps have been somewhat easier to organize price panel activity 
in this area if we could have started from scratch. As it is now we have the 
problem of separating the price panels out from the rationing activities in 
which they have become involved; getting adequate personnel on the panels 
which in some cases will only be possible by displacing individuals who should 
never have been appointed . . . securing for them clerical services which 
. . . went by default to rationing, getting procedural and instructional mate¬ 
rials out to them, educating the price clerks and the panel members in these proce¬ 
dures ... All this is to my mind preliminary to the appointment of price 
panel assistants. 


15 Report of Price Panel Program, To all Regional Price Executives, Kenneth Rowe by 
Anne Flory, August 23, 1943. 



62 


Volunteers in OP A 


In many [boards] the need for price panel work must be sold to the chairman 
of the whole board, even to the members of the panel itself, and evidently to 
the community as a whole. 

Not all regions wrote manuals; in which case State and district 
officers had to write their own procedure or improvise their action. 

The June Survey, 1943 

In the District of Columbia, an OPA district with 15 metropolitan 
boards, the Price Executive 16 wrote his own instructions and did his 
own training. With the aid of the Washington consumer interest com¬ 
mittee, he picked and trained 15 captains, 1 for each board area. 
Through the committee chairman, Mrs. Charlotte Warner, he recruited 
and trained over 400 interested price checkers to work under the 
captains. 

Training began at a June meeting in the Chamber of Commerce 
building where he first gave them a background talk on the purposes 
of price control: “Fourteen million people and their dependents, one- 
fifth of the Nation, service men among these, have no more money 
today than 3 years ago. Price control is necessary to protect their 
salaries and savings.” Price control was necessary also to keep down 
the war debt. “If inflation devalues our dollar by 50 percent the war 
debt burden will be doubled.” Then he told them that each checker 
and each individual housewife in the country had a personal re¬ 
sponsibility for the success of price control. “You can’t blame infla¬ 
tion on the wholesalers or the Blrtck Market.” The Black Market “is 
simply Mrs. Jones and her grocer multiplied a million times.” 

Each price checker Avas given her written pointers on the grocerv 
regulation: 

1. Each grocery store belongs to one of four groups. 

2. The selling price of every item must be shown on or near the item. 

3. The top legal prices of most groceries and meats appear on the printed 
posters which the grocer must display. 

She was given her written instructions for the specific survey at 
hand: 

The purpose of your visit is twofold: 

(a) To assist the retailer in determining which group his store belongs to 
and to deliver to him the proper group sign. 

(&) To check the prices and posting of prices for the commodities listed in 
column “a” of the survey form. ' 


18 Sherwood Dodge, District Price Executive, District of Columbia, 1943-45. The fol¬ 
lowing survey material is taken from several sources in his flies. 




Volunteers for Price Control 63 

The instructions contained a sample of the national office survey 
form, filled in, to show the assistant what she might expect to find: 


Commodity 

Brand 

Style or grade 

Size or 
weight 

Price 

posted 

Sell¬ 

ing 

price 

Top 

legal 

price 

Com¬ 

pli¬ 

ance 

Bread_ .. 

Honey-top__ 

Enriched _ 

1 pound 

Yes .. 

$0.09 

$0.09 

Yes. 

Coffee_ __ _ 

Smith’s 

Drip 

1 pound 

Yes.. 

. 26 

.22 

No. 

Canned corn . 

Maizette.. . _ __ 

Whole grain... 

12* ounces_ 

No_... 

15 

. 15 

No. 

Spaghetti_ 

Blue Circle_ 

Thin_ 

10 ounces_ 

Yes... 

. 11 

.12 

Yes. 


And finally each volunteer was given her copy of the “Price Panel 
Assistant’s Guide.” 

On the next day the captains and their assistants reported to the 
various local boards. Board 11 was in an old schoolhouse. The 
captain reported to the chief clerk who directed her to an empty room 
piled high with grocery group signs, meat, and community posters. 
On the desk was a pile of survey forms, each showing the name and 
address of some grocer in the area. The captain parcelled these out 
to her assistants, allowing about an hour’s time for each store, gave 
each assistant a package of group numbers and community posters, 
and reminded her of the “Do’s and Don’ts” : 

Do —be sure to introduce yourself to the manager and explain the purpose 
of your visit. 

Do —call the retailer’s attention to any over-ceiling prices and encourage him 
(not command him) to change them. 

Don't —dispute or argue with the retailer. Remember that the majority of 
violations are likely to be mistakes rather than on purpose, and that no matter 
how impolitely you may be treated, the success of this program depends upon 
your tact and understanding. 

Then the survey began. Mrs. Jones went first to a large independent 
grocery store. The owner, Mr. Blank, happened to be on the Grocery 
Advisory Committee for the city, he knew all about the survey, he 
was expecting her, and proudly showed Mi's. Jones around the store 
to see that the Group 2 sign was near the cash register and the dollar- 
and-cent posters all placed Avhere they were easy for customers to 
read. Mr. Blank went with Mrs. Jones while she checked the prices 
on each of the 12 specified items. There was no price posted on the 
bread. Chagrinned, Mr. Blank explained that of course everyone 
knew the price of bread but he quickly siezed a cardboard and chalk, 
wrote 9 cents and stuck it up by the bread. Mr. Blank was pleased 
to see that Mrs. Jones wrote in the margin: “Corrected while I was 

there.” 

































64 


Volunteers in OP A 


Mrs. Jones then went into a tiny store with no clerks and scarcely 
room for the owner in between the boxes. There was no group sign 
in sight and there were no posters. The owner spoke broken English. 
Mrs. Jones introduced herself and asked Mr. Green why his posters 
were not up for customers to read. After a few more questions, Mr. 
Green darted into the back room and came back with a pile of OPA 
material. “I no read English,” he said. “My boy gone to Army. 
I no read. You tell me.” Mrs. Jones told him, and together they 
put up “Group I” and the community poster. A few cans had prices 
on them and the prices were not above ceiling, but Mrs. Jones told 
him every can and every package must have a price on or near it 
and the prices must not be higher than those on the big poster. Mr. 
Green went eagerly to work and Mrs. Jones wrote the whole story 
on the back of the survey form. 

Mrs. Jones’ next store was a large meat market. The group sign 
was up but the meat poster was so far away behind the counter that 
no customer could read it and there were no prices or grades on the 
meat in the showcase. She suggested to the manager that he bring the 
poster forward where it could be read. He grudgingly complied, but 
when she asked about the lack of prices on the meat, Mr. Brown said 
the butcher was new, didn’t know how to do anything right, and what 
did OPA mean, anyhow, by rolling back the price of beef 4 cents a 
pound? Mrs. Jones explained that the law required the prices to be 
posted, and she wrote “not posted” after each meat item on the survey. 

At the next store there was a group sign but no posters; the manager 
admitted that a “lot of stuff” came to him but he didn’t have time to 
read it. “Anyway,” he said, “why do you pick on me ? I’m an honest 
man, I’ve been in business for 21 years, and I’ve never had a dissatis¬ 
fied customer. Why don’t you go down to that place on the corner?” 
Mrs. Jones explained that she was going to the place on the corner, 
that the volunteers were going to every store in the city, and that one 
big purpose of these surveys was to protect the honest merchant 
against the chiseller. “I guess that’s right,” he said as he began put¬ 
ting up the poster, “we’re all in this together 5 we might as well get 
on with it. You come back next week and you’ll find everything all 
right.” Mrs. Jones promised to come back. 

At the corner store Mrs. Jones found numerous prices above the 
ceiling. When she pointed them out, Mr. Black said quickly that 
it was just a mistake and he changed them at once. But the mistakes 
were all “over” the ceiling and Mrs. Jones made a note to go back 
there next week, too. 

So it went. The first survey was the hardest. When it was over 
and the survey forms tabulated, the record showed that on the 12 basic 
food items almost 1 in every 4 was being sold over the ceiling and only 


65 


Volunteers for Price Control 

46 percent of the stores in Washington were correctly priced on all 12 
items. But of the 54 percent showing violations, there were many 
who had not understood, and honestly wanted the price panel assist¬ 
ants to come back the next week. 17 

When the regional records of the June survey 18 were all in, the pol¬ 
icy of the national office was justified. All but some 300 of the 5500 
local boards reported at least a beginning in the appointment of price 
panel members. Also, over half of the boards, 2,960, had recruited 
and used a total of 25,662 price panel assistants to survey their grocery 
stores. Both community pricing and the volunteer program were 
justified in the showing of the cost-of-living index. For the first time 
in 30 months the index dropped. On June 15 it stood at 124.8. Jubi¬ 
lant reports going back to the local boards urged them to “hold the 
line.” 


17 Table A, District of Columbia Report, July 8, 1943, in District of Columbia price files. 

18 Report to all Regional Price Executives, Price panel programs, August 23, 1943. 





















■ i 1 

' 




■ 















' 

























































































CHAPTER 



Neighborly Persuasion 


In the summer of 1943 OPA embarked upon an era of price control 
which may fairly be called the era of neighborly persuasion. On 
July 8 Chester Bowles, the persuasive State Director of Connecticut 
was brought to the national office as general manager to reorganize 
the Office of Price Administration “in line with the wishes of Con¬ 
gress.” He was fully in accord with the price panel program. As a 
former advertising executive he saw the educational and public rela¬ 
tions value in community participation. He had frequently reiterated 
his belief that 95 percent of all violations were due to ignorance or in¬ 
difference and could be eradicated by education- and friendly persua¬ 
sion. He was committed to the development of the price panel system 
with emphasis on its function of friendly mediation. 

Price Panel Development 

A few days after his arrival, a message went forward in Prentiss 
Brown’s name to the Regional Administrators on “Community partici¬ 
pation in the Price Panel Program.” It urged once more that the 
work should be extended to those areas which had not yet established 
price panels and that, where they were already functioning, the work 
should be encouraged and strengthened. It asked the Administrators 
to give this their immediate personal attention, since “on the success 
of our price panels depends in large measure our ability to hold the 
line against inflation.” 1 

In the June survey, it is true, half the boards of the country had 
made a beginning at price checking, but price checking was only a part 
of the price panel system. The plan for volunteer participation envis¬ 
aged by the national office directives called for a continuing and 
integrated program at the community level. It implied continuing 
store visits and continuing education of the retailers. It included 


1 Memorandum, Prentiss Brown, to all Regional Administrators, “Community Participa¬ 
tion in Price Control”, July 13, 1943. 


67 




68 


V olunteers in OP A 


prompt consideration for the complaints of housewives. It included 
friendly mediation for all minor and unwitting violations. Such a 
lolan called for strong, well-trained price panels and “a local structure 
into which they could be properly and firmly fitted.” 

It is safe to assume that in view of the stress of the first community 
pricing and the first national grocery survey, the price panel organiza¬ 
tion was at best in the process of being developed. Under the spur of 
this July directive the panel appointments were pushed through. 

Appointment 

The panel members were drawn from lists submitted by the OCD, 
the labor unions, the women’s clubs, citizens associations and con¬ 
sumer groups. Five members were usually chosen for each of the early 
price panels: a housewife, two business men, a professional, and a 
labor representative, “to represent the community as a whole.” 2 From 
the beginning of the community pricing program, in most areas, efforts 
were made to give racial and minority groups representation. 

Once appointed the new members had to be inducted into the local 
board, then trained for their new responsibilities. In many areas 
this first step, “induction,” was as difficult as the second. Many ration 
board chairmen were indifferent, even hostile, to the price program, 
too many were jealous of their prestige as board members, and per¬ 
haps resented the use of “price chairman” as title for head of the 
price panel. The broad representational base of the price panels 
was an added cause for friction. In the District of Columbia one 
influential chairman held out for months against the appointment of 
any woman as a board member. In another area with a large Negro 
population the board chairman and all ration board members threat¬ 
ened to resign in a body when a prominent Negro was appointed to 
the price panel. 3 Several board chairmen were insistent that no labor 
representatives were needed, or wanted, on their price panels. In 
Washington, the District Director read his chairmen the directive on 
representation and pushed the appointments through. In most areas 
the board chairmen did not resign, but neither did they welcome the 
price panels. This attitude carried over in many cases to the chief 
clerks, so. that neither space nor equipment was made available for 
the new volunteers. Rationing had been “enthroned” too long to 
accept gracefully the new adjudicators. To both board chairmen 
and chief clerks the price board members and price panel assistants 
seemed interlopers and rivals. 


2 Field Administrative Letter No. 3, Rev., May 7, 1943. 

3 Negroes served on 6 of the 15 boards in Washington ; only 2 chairmen made any objec 
tions ; only 1 was offensive in the matter; none resigned. 



Neighborly Persuasion 69 

Procedure 

In spite of these obstacles, the price panels were appointed and 
sworn in at the local boards. The first task of the panel was then to 
establish its position in the community by overcoming public indif¬ 
ference and instilling confidence in the business groups as to its sin¬ 
cerity and impartiality. 

Trade meetings were frequently the first approach taken by the 
new price panel. In boards with a small retailer population all the 
retailers of the area might be invited. Where this was out of the ques¬ 
tion, the meeting might be held for the retailers of some one group 
(grocers, restaurant operators, or laundrymen, for instance) who were 
about to be surveyed, or who for some reason were in particular need 
of trade education. A district office specialist was apt to make the 
main speech of the evening and introduce the new panel. In any case 
this was the opportunity for the panel to impress the retailers with the 
sincerity of their purpose, and to‘explain the educational and compli¬ 
ance methods of the price panel system. Such an introduction made 
the work of both price panel and price panel assistants much easier 
.and more acceptable to the community. 

Prompt consideration for the complaints of consumers was an im¬ 
portant step in overcoming public indifference. The price panels 
were instructed that all consumer complaints must be investigated 
and acknowledged, that the complainant’s name must never be dis¬ 
closed without his consent, and that, when a violation existed, the 
complainant must always be informed of his right under the law 
to sue for three times the overcharge or $50, whichever was greater. 4 
In Connecticut Chester Bowles had told his boards that “the success 
or failure of the price panel will rest to a large extent on the considera¬ 
tion given to consumer complaints whether they are real or imagi¬ 
nary.” 5 The consumer complaint was the panel’s most immediate 
contact with the consumers of the community. 

The third step was the panel conference with individual retailers. 
After any survey the panel had to decide which retailers should re¬ 
ceive a recheck, which ones needed warning letters, and which must 
be called for panel conferences. Definite violations, whether dis¬ 
covered from consumer complaints or compliance surveys, implied a 
panel conference with the retailer. This meeting was the real test 
of the panels’ ability, and its success was measured by the number 

4 This right was modified by the act as amended, July 1944. 

5 Memorandum, Chester Bowles, to all war price and rationing boards, Connecticut, 
May 1943. 



7 Q V olunteers in OP A 

of cases it could adjust without referral to the district office. The 
members had been told: 

The purpose of the price panel system is not to see how many cases can be 
referred to the District Office for legal enforcement, but on the contrary, to see 
how many can be successfully disposed of by the community itself. 6 

According; to instructions the retailer was called for conference 
at a specific hour convenient for him. He was to be introduced to the 
panel members, he was to be told that these were volunteers, neighbors, 
without legal power to fine or coerce him; he must be given a chance 
to tell his side of the story. Within this framework, if the chair¬ 
man was an attorney, he could (and frequently did) give a 15-minute 
opening talk on the dangers of inflation. If, however, the chairman 
was himself proprietor of a neighboring store, he might say col¬ 
loquially : “Mr. Blank, we’ve called you in here because the last grocery 
survey showed you were overcharging on hamburger. Now we’re just 
a few volunteers from this neighborhood trying to help the Govern¬ 
ment keep prices down so the country won’t go to pot while our boys 
are away at the war. We sort of stand between you and legal en¬ 
forcement up at the district office. We want to explain the regula¬ 
tion to you and ask you why you aren’t obeying the law.” At this 
Mr. Blank usually protested that he had not meant to break the law, 
that he had not received the regulation, or had not understood it, 
and believed thoroughly in price control. The chairman then 
patiently explained the specific regulation to him and pointed out the 
inflationary effect of even minor price violations. If this was Mr. 
Blank's first summons, the chairman was apt to close with: “Now 
Mr. Blank we’re not going to report you up at the district office this 
time; all we want is for you to go back and make your prices right. 
We're after price control in this board, not scalps.” Of course if 
Mr. Blank refused to change his price, or was still overcharging when 
the price panel assistant called again, his case was “referred to the 
district office” for legal action. But this was the spirit in which most 
price panels approached their work. Over and over the chairmen 
explained, each in his own language, the dangers of inflation, the 
purpose of price control, the details of the specific regulation involved, 
and then to the best of their abilities persuaded the retailer into com¬ 
pliance. 

Panel Authority 

Not all retailers could be persuaded, and the panel’s authority was 
then called into question. Early instructions to the panels gave 


6 Price Panel Member Letter of Appointment, Robert K. Thompson, District Director, 
Washington, D. C. 



Neighborly Persuasion 


71 


them two sanctions: (1) the panel conference, and (2) referral to 
the district office for legal action. On August 3, 1943, a joint state¬ 
ment from the Legal and Price Divisions listed seven sanctions within 
the power of the panel, the first six of which were to be explored 
and exhausted before the seventh, referral to the district office, was 
to be taken. 

1. Price panel conference. 

2. The promise to comply. 

3. Warning letter (from the price panel chairman). 

4. Refund of the overcharge to the customer. 

5. Contribution to the United States Treasury (when overcharged customers 
were unknown). 

6. License warning (issued at the district office on certification by the panel).. 

7. Referral to the district office. 

The first four sanctions were used freely and generally. The sixth 
sanction, license warning notice, depended upon cooperation from the 
Legal Division and was limited by that fact. The last, referral to 
the district office, was obviously a last resort and too frequent usage 
of it generally indicated a weak panel. 

The fifth sanction, voluntary contributions to the United States 
Treasury, needs to be mentioned separately because apparently it 
was not delegated to the price panels in all regions. For the first 
6 months of the new program only the reports from Regions IV and 
VII make any reference to it. Region VII evidently educated some 
of its price panels in the use of “voluntary contributions” even before 
the days of community pricing. 7 The January 1943 records of the 
Butte, Montana (Region VII) price panel indicate that: (1) a dis¬ 
trict office investigator worked with the panel, and (2) the panel, after 
a conference with the retailers, recommended a settlement to the dis¬ 
trict office and received the district office confirmation before the re¬ 
tailer was notified. This procedure seems to have been highly suc¬ 
cessful. Region IV, although it did not take voluntary contributions 
at such an early date, was, by the end of 1943, reporting monthly 
“thousands of dollars in voluntary contributions” to the United States 
Treasury. A report 8 by the price panel coordinator of the region, 
explains the method: 

In this area, when a merchant finds he has been selling an item above ceiling, 
the panel suggests to him that he may not only refund to the customer who 
lias complained, but estimate how long he has been charging over the ceiling 
and therefore how many unknown customers he had overcharged. They then 


7 Records, price panel sessions, Silver Bow County war price and rationing board, 
Butte, Mont., January 1943. 

8 Price clerk news letter, Washington, D. C., February 12, 1942. 


749937—47 


6 




72 


Volunteers in OP A 


suggest that as an evidence of good faith he may wish to make this total refund 
to the United States Treasury. 

It is significant that this region which was so successful in receiving 
voluntary contributions, eventually had to discourage them. Some 
panels overstepped the limits of their authority and, instead of sug¬ 
gesting contributions, were in fact imposing fines. 9 Evidently close 
district office supervision was a necessary precaution in the use of this 
sanction. 

All of these sanctions except the last two were variations of neigh¬ 
borly persuasion. This use of community pressure was of course the 
expressed purpose of the price panel system, but it must always be re¬ 
membered that panel mediation rested upon the foundation of legal 
action against flagrant violators. Without this, the panel was on 
shifting sands. 

Unfortunately, the Legal Division was not always willing or able 
to give this support. The Price Division in district after district 
makes the complaint that Enforcement would not follow through on 
panel referrals of willful violators. This was variously attributed to 
Enforcement’s indifference to small cases, or shortage of manpower to 
make the necessary investigations, or disposition deliberately to wash 
its hands of the price panel program when it lost technical control of 
the volunteers. One District Price Executive writes of a panel that 
resigned because Enforcement would take no action against a flagrant 
violator who defied the panel. Many districts report that whole re¬ 
tailer neighborhoods became careless and defiant when no action was 
taken against a known violator. All panels however did not resign, 
nor did Enforcement always fail to act, and many panels became ex¬ 
pert in the use of their limited authority. 

In general, four things were necessary to the success of a price panel. 
First, the members had to be committed wholeheartedly to the pur¬ 
poses of price control. Second, they had to be able to command the 
respect of the community. Third, the panel had to receive continuous 
training and encouragement from the Price Division. Fourth, it 
needed the assured support of the Enforcement Division. 


Early Persuasion 

Price panels were established in the local boards to educate the 
retailers, to give prompt consideration to consumer complaints, and to 
collect information on compliance. Where violations were found the 
panels were to attempt to adjust as many cases as possible “through 
friendly persuasion” and “to secure assurance that the violation will 

° * nterview ’ April 1947, with James Derrieux, Regional Administrator, Region IV March 
1943-April 1944. 



Neighborly Persuasion 


73 


not be repeated/’ Flagrant or repeated violations were to be referred 
to the district office, but it was the expressed hope of OPA that through 
this system “the vast proportion of cases” would be adjusted without 
formal action by the Enforcement staff. 10 Any evaluation of price 
panel work must be made in the light of these expressed purposes. 

The most direct knowledge of the price panel hearings comes to us 
from the weekly “minutes” which each price panel clerk sent to the 
district office. * 11 These minutes grew in sophistication as the price 
clerks learned their work, but even the early records give clear testi¬ 
mony of the attitude of the price panels and the problems with which 
they were confronted. 

The Promise to Comply 

All reports of the first panel meetings sound much alike. The 
panels decided upon methods of procedure and called the first violators 
for conference. 

Panel members discussed how they would conduct the price conference with 
the retailers. Mr. S was elected to be the spokesman for the panel. 

The first retailer interview was T’s Market. Mr. T’s son spoke in behalf of 
his father. He explained they are willing to comply but since neither his father 
or mother read or write the responsibility falls on him. He promised in the 
future he will devote more time to checking on the prices, he assured the 
panel that the next check would find the store in compliance. 12 

This was duplicated in essence week after week and in board after 
board. Both the panel members and the retailers were feeling their 
way. The panel members carefully explained the regulation; the 
retailers quickly gave, and the panel members rather quickly accepted, 
assurances that the violations would not be repeated. 

Mr. C was admitted . . . his store on second check showing six violations. 

Mr. B explained the seriousness of the violations, the importance of posting 
.prices and complying with all OPA regulations. 

Mr. C was very grateful for the friendly explanation. He stated he was “for 
OPA 100 percent,” and he thought it especially good for the “little man” in the 
grocery business. He promised to cooperate in every way. 13 

Later on, the “promise to comply” was a written statement which 
the retailer was asked to sign, but even in the early months of the 


10 Staff Memorandum 163. 

11 At the close of local boards in 1946, the national office Records Branch designated 
certain boards in each region as “Record Boards” and others as “Principal City Boards.” 
The price panel minutes of these two groups were designed as record material for the 
National Archives. At the time of this writing, they were not yet available. The fol¬ 
lowing excerpts have been taken from a random collection of price panel minutes of four 
average size boards in one city, Washington, D. C. 

13 Price Panel Minutes, War Price and Rationing Board No. 12, Washington, D. C., August 
4, 1943. 

13 Price Panel Minutes, War Price and Rationing Board No. 50, Washington, D. C. 



74 


V olunteers in OP A 

program the panels were careful to extract and the price clerk was 
careful to record some form of this “assurance.” 

The panel explained to the retailer just how the price panel stood between him 
and the Enforcement Division and was set up for the purpose of helping where 
such was needed. After this explanation, Mr. A thanked the Panel for the 
kindly way in which his case had been explained. He promised to cooperate 
in every way possible. 

Mr. T on third checking showed violations on overcharging and not posting 
his prices. He was most appreciative, and stated he did not understand the 
regulations, and would comply. 

Owners of the G Market were next interviewed on two consumer complaints,, 
having overcharged on bacon and round steak. They promised to not let this 
happen again. They thanked the panel for their kindness and promised com¬ 
pliance. 14 

Almost all retailers gave the promise to comply, but inevitably sooner 
or later some reclacitrant defied the panel and the price clerk duly 
recorded that fact. 

Our fourth client was just the most ungrateful person, namely Mr. H. K. 

On August 30 [he] was checked for the third time showing two overcharges- 
with nothing posted. 

The panel instructed the clerk to have Mr. K. come in and talk it over. His 
attitude was very ugly and uncouth. His first argument was that he was 
forced by the wholesale dealer to buy things he didn’t need and couldn’t sell, im 
order to buy certain things he w r anted. When asked by the panel for the name 
of the dealer, he evaded the issue. When questioned by the panel in regard to his 
overcharge on tomato juice his statement was he only got a chance to sell it to 
“drunks” and if they could afford to spend for whiskey he would charge what 
he pleased for his tomato juice. 

When reminded of OPA ceiling prices, his answ T er was “To hell with OPA.” 

It was very difficult for the panel to talk to this grocer. He had his own 
ideas and thoroughly understood the regulations in regard to his not posting; 
prices and overcharges. 

The price clerk wishes at this point to make mention of the diplomacy in whiclf 
the panel handled this situation. They stated to Mr. K. that they were very 
sorry of his attitude, and regretted that they had been unable to help him. It 
was the decision of the panel to refer this case to the district office. 15 

The price panel could not handle the case and, as instructed, they re¬ 
ferred it to the district office. If legal enforcement did not materialize- 
at this point the panel lost face and price control in the area suffered, 
accordingly. 

Conversely, if the Enforcement staff did act on a panel case of this; 
sort the news of such action spread rapidly and had a chastening effect 
upon the whole area. By this same date another board in the city was; 

14 Price Panel Minutes, War Price and Rationing Board No. 50, Washington, D. C., 
September 23, 1943. 

15 Price Panel Minutes, War Price and Rationing Board No. 50, Washington. D. C. 
September 23, 1943. 



Neighborly Persuasion 


75 


humming with excitement because they had referred a “flagrant viola¬ 
tor,” Enforcement had acted, and word of the indictment had reached 
the newspapers. The price clerk’s panel minutes for the district 
office note that: 

Today we liad in the board seven grocers and three butchers, three telephone 
calls from same, two civilians on complaints and three restaurant men. 

S., the fellow being indicted called both yesterday and today for mark-ups 
on groceries and vegetables. 

... We are almost as busy as the Union Station in the Price Division of 
Board No. 31 since the recent newspaper publicity. 16 

A glance at the minutes of these same price panels in 1944, in June 
or July, shows very little change in procedure. The work had be¬ 
come so streamlined that seven or eight conferences could be held in 
one evening, but the panels were still explaining regulations. The 
“first violation” conferences were being held with restaurant men, or 
laundry men, or garage men. The majority of the conferences on any 
given night were these educational ones where the retailer was grateful 
for the explanation and promised to comply. But some retailers were 
in for their second or third or even fourth conference. These were 
the “repeaters” of small violations. Their violations, their excuses, 
and their promises to comply had not changed. On July 12, 1944, 
the price panel at Washington's Board 11 had four such grocers, one 
after the other: 

W. market —Mr. W, the owner, came in for conference. He bad been in for 
a conference before but subsequent checks revealed continued violations. Mr. 
W’s attention was called to the fact, that in any check, he has never posted his 
vegetables and fruits. His alibi was that he thought the posting of the community 
price list was sufficient. He said in the future they would be posted correctly. 
We are to check him in a week. 

H.’s market —Mrs. H. was in to answer to price and posting violations. She 
claimed she had not been receiving community price lists but is now receiving 
all. It was pointed out to her that she had a bad record. The panel advised 
her to improve considerably on the next check which will be next week. 

W’s food shop—Mrs. E. appeared for her husband who is ill. A recent com¬ 
plaint was brought to her attention. She complained of a drunken butcher (whom 
she was trying to replace), a sick husband, an increased pay roll, shortage of 
help, lack of interest on the part of employees and the fact that she was over¬ 
worked. 

We are to check her again in a week and she promised a marked improvement. 

A’s market —Mr. K. came in for grocery violations and Mr. L., the manager 
of the meat section, was told of violations in his department. Both men stated 
that since the OPA advised them they were in violation they have posted every¬ 
thing. However, conversation revealed that they do not post grades on meats 
they said everything would be O. K. when w r e checked them next week. 


10 Price Panel Minutes, War Price and Rationing Board No. 31, Washington, D. C., 
September 23, 1943. 



76 


V olunteers in OP A 


These excuses, which were valid enough during the first 6 months of 
community pricing or at the first conference, ceased to have much 
validity at the third or fourth conference. However, since Enforce¬ 
ment had no time for such small violations, the panel could only do its 
best to keep them within bounds by frequent checking and occasional 
conferences. 

Consumer Complaints 

According to instructions, consumer complaints always came first 
on the agenda and the reports bear evidence of the amount of time and 
patience the panels expended on them. 

Where a violation-was shown, the complainant was informed of his 
right of suit under the law. Surprisingly few took advantage of this, 
but most complainants were dissatisfied with the return of a 2- or 3- 
cent overcharge, and wanted OP A to “do something about it.” A re¬ 
tailer’s past record counted heavily and not infrequently decided both 
panel and complainant on their course of action. 

Fourth case. Mr. B. reports that he purchased at this delicatessen a box of 
crackers for 45 cents, he presented receipt showing he had been overcharged 16’ 
cents. 

Mr. S. asked Mr. A. if he had anything to say. His reply was he was taken 
to the hospital in January and came back to his store the middle of February 
. . . that truthfully he was not aware of the correct selling price until he- 
called the price clerk and had her figure his mark-up. He offered to refund the 
16 cents to Mr. B. He asked the panel members if they thought he would be 
so foolish to give a receipt if he had any intention of wrong doing. Mr. S. asked 
Mr. B. what he wanted and Mr. B. replied he thought he would take it to court 
and sue for $50 damages. 

Mr. S. reminded Mr. B. . . . This man (grocer) had been checked six 
times in the past 3 months and each time was found in compliance and had never 
had a complaint or occasion to be called before the board before ... he 
would advise Mr. B. to give Mr. A. another chance and then if he is caught 
wilfully overcharging he will be dealt with severely by the board. 

At this point Mr. B made the statement he would think it over and on second 
thought he probably wouldn’t sue at all. 

Money will be refunded. Case dismissed. 17 

All cases did not present such clear-cut overcharges and the panels 
sometimes felt they needed the wisdom of Solomon to mediate equita¬ 
bly. The resourcefulness and patience of the panel members was tested 
to the utmost by these borderline cases which often took on the aspects 
of a neighborhood quarrel, and yet, to the individuals involved, repre¬ 
sented the reality of price control* Here, if anywhere, the time-con¬ 
suming system of friendly persuasion was fully justified: 

The price clerk then admitted Mr. and Mrs. H and their father who had been 
called to this meeting of the price panel on complaint of a customer that they had 


17 Price Panel Minutes, Board No. 31, Washington, D. C., March 8, 1944. 



Neighborly Persuasion 


77 


charged $10 for one loaf of Halle Kosher bread weighing 10 pounds. The chair¬ 
man opened the conference. The following are the essential points brought out 
in the discussion. 

Chairman. You have not filed ceiling prices on this bread? 

Mrs. H. Yes; in name of New Home Bakery. 

Panel Member. Tell the whole story. 

Mr. H. Mr. O’ comes in, I know him very well. Will you make me a big Halle? 
I don’t care what it will cost. No; I haven’t got a baker. Can’t Sam make it? 
I can’t tell you how much it will cost—the labor will cost more than the bread 
is worth. I don't care, I’m willing to pay $10 or $15. Will have 150 people at 
the party. 

Mr. H. I came down to bakery at 2 o’clock. Mr. O called me on the phone— 
don’t want 15 pounds but 10 pounds. We did not get a baker—could not. It 
turned out beautiful. We called Mr. O and told him. A lady came down. What 
is the price of the bread? Mr. H said $10, I’m not charging for the ingredients of 
the bread but for the labor. Mrs. O called at 2 p. m. Monday, I want to talk about 
something urgent. She wanted to talk about the price of the bread—the $10 
charge. The Union called, “What do mean by charging Brother O $20 for a 
loaf of bread? I told him my side of it and he said “that is a different story.” 
The next thing we are here. 

Panel Member. You have no bill showing how much you charged in March 1942? 

Mrs. H. No. 

Panel Member. Then you must accept as your ceiling price the price charged 
by your nearest competitions, $1 to $2. You must also put in writing, or post, the 
ceiling price of the things you sell. A price must always be set. You can’t figure 
the price of labor separately. 

Mrs. H. If you could talk to Mr. O, I think we can settle on a price. 

Panel Member. You yourself may take it up with Mr. O and settle it. 

Mrs. H. My father-in-law will go to his place of business and they will settle 
the price. 

The price panel adjourned at 5: 30 p. m. 

Addenda: On Thursday Mrs. H. brought her list of ceiling prices in to the 
price clerk and swore before a notary that they were her March 1942 prices. 
She reported that Mr. H had finally contacted Mr. O’ with the intention of making 
refund but Mr. O said “I want to drop the whole matter.” 

The price clerk called Mr. O to be sure that this was true and his wife said it 
was not, that no offer to refund had been made and that if no satisfactory refund 
was made they would sue for $50. 

The price clerk then advised Mrs. H to press the matter of a refund to Mr. O 
in order to avoid the suit and also further action on the part of the OPA. 

On November 15 Mrs. H mailed a check for $8 to Mr. O as a refund. 18 

As the panels learned to work on durable goods (refrigerators, 
washing machines, automobiles, etc.), the refunds became more size¬ 
able and the complainants more eager to get their money back. Dis¬ 
trict reports showing refunds, board by board, spurred the panels on, 
and in December 1943 we find the panel was “elated * * * that 

-Board 31 had effected refunds [to customers] to the amount of 
$319 during the past 2 weeks.” 19 Five months later in May 1944, 

is price Panel Minutes, Board No. 12, Washington, D. C., November 10, 1943. 

10 Price Panel Minutes, Board No. 31, December 15, 1943. 



78 


Volunteers in OP A 


the same panel reported “price activities of board since June 1943, 
as follows: 1,118 store visits, 102 panel conferences, 11 referrals [to 
district office], $823.69 in refunds.” 20 The amount of customer re¬ 
funds increased steadily for each month of panel operation and the 
records show that transforming consumer complaints into these re¬ 
funds frequently took even more time and patience than was needed 
for the $10 loaf of bread. 

A Failure of Neighborly Persuasion 

Panels were not so successful in settling the meat violations which 
crop up early in the records of all boards. These violations were 
brought to the panel in large numbers, both through consumer com¬ 
plaints and surveys. The amount of overcharge was usually small 
and difficult to prove, and the retailers generally fought attempts at 
mediation. From the beginning they claimed they were caught be¬ 
tween two fires, the wholesaler and the consumer, and that unless 
OPA could take care of the wholesalers, they, the retailers, must take 
advantage of the consumers or go out of existence. Perhaps the 
national OPA was fully aware of this and did all it could. However 
that may be, the signs were present from the beginning of the price 
panel records, pointing all too clearly to the eventual debacle of the 
meat program. 

In the following instance, as early as October 1943, a panel, flooded 
with meat complaints, attempted an educational conference. 

Next to appear for conference at 9 p. m. were four butchers to be instructed 
and educated in the proper regulations regarding prices, postings, and grading 
of meats, as this board had received numerous complaints regarding said butchers 
for the past 2 weeks. Mr. S told butchers the situation regarding complaints 
in this area was shameful and had to be corrected at once. . . . Mr. S asked 
butchers if it were not true that at various times each butcher had been visited 
and checked by both price captain also price clerk and instructed as to the 
proper regulations—reply—yes. . . . 

Butchers complained this method of sending complaints into board was unfair, 
as many times in the case of a roast of beef naturally the weight would not 
be the same when originally weighed with bone in as it would be with the bones 
taken out. Board members granted same to be true and instructed said butchers, 
hereafter when delivering such purchases, just to mark the word trim, “TRIM so 
much” on the sales sheet. . . . 

Mr. H told butchers that if they were being forced to do something that was 
illegal then it was their duty as good citizens to make this known to this board, 
that this would undoubtedly save them time in court, money, injunctions, and 
suspension of “business. Mr. S pointed out that there was no sense in them 
getting in violation just because the other fellow was doing so—you know what 
;you should pay, you should come to the right people for your own protection, 


00 Ibid. May 16, 1944. 



Neighborly Persuasion 


79 

people that can save and help you, otherwise you are as responsible as the whole- 
saler. 

Mi. S pointed out that sometimes the laws seem hard, they are not meant for 
the individual, so if you are hit hard you have to take it and be satisfied the 
same as others and be content to get along until this conflict is over, to which 
Mr. M stated, he was not content to just get along, he was in business to make 
monej, while he was here, as he did not know if he would be alive after the- 
w T ar. Mr. H stated if you are not willing to sell at ceiling prices then it is 
better to shut your doors and go out of business. * * * 

Mr. M stated his biggest grouch was, that in regard to wholesalers he had to 
keep his mouth shut. Mr. M stated he knew of a man turned in a wholesaler for 
meat overcharges, now this butcher (retailer) is black-balled and can’t get any 
meat from the wholesalers. 21 

Restaurant proprietors also claimed overcharges by the wholesale 
meat men and displayed the same fear of losing their supplies if they 
complained to the OPA. 

Mr. H of the T Cafe, had raised 16 prices on the menus which had been picked 
up on the last survey. He stated that the girl who usually makes the menus is 
ill in the hospital and he had to have someone else make them and he was too 
busy to check them. * * * 

Mrs. R asked why mistakes are always made up instead of down. 

Mr. H admitted that the chef wouldn’t dare to make it down. He said that he 
had raised the price of the chicken dinners because his dealer had been giving 
him 3-pound chickens instead of 2%-pound ones and that he would have to have 
the extra price. 

He was told that he could petition hut that he would have to show an over-all 
loss. No; he couldn’t do that, he made $13,000 last year hut he felt that was not 
a good return on $100,000 business. ... He said that he pays more for meat 
than he did a year ago. 

Mr. S challenged him on that remark. 

He said that the meat men have ways of getting around prices, he is always 
charged for AA heef but is sent other grades. He was asked the name of his 
wholesaler but refused to tell as he said a “number of us men” are going to get 
the dope and then take them to court, but they want to be sure that they will 
be able to buy somewhere else. 22 

Housewives made this same complaint that they paid (points and 
money) for double A beef and got something tougher. The most fre¬ 
quent violation found on surveys was the failure to post price and 
grade of the cuts of meat in the meat case. Since the price varied 
according to the grade, this made it almost impossible for the average 
shopper to know whether she was being properly charged. The price 
panel assistants, the price clerks, and the panels spent a large amount 
of their time and persuasive abilities in attempting to get prices posted 
in the meat cases. In areas where the checkers were persistent, the 
butchers merely left the meat cases empty and kept their meat in the 
refrigerators. Not until the days of the Administrator’s Claim when 


21 Price Panel Minutes, Board No. 31, Washington, D. C., October 20, 1943. 

22 Price Panel Minutes, Board No. 12, Washington, D. C., May 17, 1944. 



80 


Volunteers in OP A 

the panels demanded invoices was there any chance at the board level of 
proving meat violations. 23 

By the middle of 1944 almost all active panels had held at least one 
educational “trade meeting” with meat violators, had referred their 
most flagrant violators to the district office, and had reported again 
and again, both that they had a suspiciously high number of consumer 
complaints on meat, and that meat men when called to conference all 
claimed overcharges by the wholesalers. In the fall of 1944 the na¬ 
tional office sent a special crew of meat investigators into 8 or 10 large 
eastern cities. They found the panel alarms more than justified. The 
panels had done their part in reporting this situation, but it cannot 
be claimed that neighborly persuasion accomplished compliance in the 
meat trade. 

Accomplishments 

By the end of the first year of their existence the panels had proved 
their ability as educators. The great majority of violators called be¬ 
fore them did not need to be called again. The neighborly, informal, 
but purposeful atmosphere of the panel conference was ideal for han¬ 
dling consumer complaints. The panels satisfied customer and retailer 
in thousands upon thousands of cases. In the first 6 months of 1944 
alone they successfully mediated 127,529 cases which otherwise might 
have clogged the dockets of the 93 district offices. 

It is true that the percentage of repeaters, or persistent violators, 
w^as larger than had been anticipated at the inception of the program, 
and their recurring presence at the conference table was a severe test 
of the patience of the panel members. The flagrant violator could be 
referred to the district office but Enforcement was not interested in the 
retailer with only small violations in posting or price. Although the 
panels knew that failure to post frequently concealed price violations, 
and although they knew that continued small price violations added up 
to alarming amounts, they were helpless at this time to do more than 
check the stores, keep the tally, and record the promises to comply. 
The panels fulfilled their purpose in correcting the large number of 
violations due to ignorance or indifference, but clearly some other 
method or some increased authority was needed to reach the small 
persistent violator. 

On deep-seated dislocations of the price-control structure, such as the 
meat situation proved to be, the price panels had no real effect. But the 
records of the panels proved they were a barometer in this respect and 
perhaps their reports should have been considered more carefully at 
the time. 


23 Hamburger was an exception to this generalization. Hamburger, i. e., ground meat, 
had only one price regardless of grade. 



Neighborly Persuasion 


81 


In summing up, the greatest contribution of the early price panels 
lay in their persuasive education of that great majority of retailers 
who were violating through ignorance or indifference, who were called 
for one panel conference and never needed to be called again. Edu¬ 
cation and neighborhood pressure were necessary and effective in 
these cases. 

To the everlasting credit of the price panels and of price control 
under OPA, this necessary “education” was generally given in a 
neighborly spirit. Where this was so, OPA earned the judgment 
passed upon one of its price panels by the proprietor of a small corner 
grocery who was called for conference. The price chairman of this 
board was himself a grocer. He was scrupulously careful not to sit 
in judgment upon a competitor, but he opened the meeting as usual 
before turning it over to his labor member assistant. Carefully and 
earnestly, as he had explained to violator after violator at meeting 
after meeting, he told the elderly proprietor and his apprehensive wife 
the reasons why grocery men should join the fight against inflation. 
In words of one syllable he explained the purpose of the panel, the 
requirements of the regulation, and the retailer’s own offense. Then 
he asked the offender for his side of the story. At this point the old 
man turned reassuringly to his wife with the words: “See, Momma ? 
See? It’s like what I told you. It’s a democracy.” 








































































































CHAPTER 

7 

Chester Bowles Gives a Lift 


On November 8, 1943, Chester Bowles, formerly a local volunteer, 
Was sworn in as OPA Administrator. His influence on the volunteer 
program had been felt from the time he became General Manager in 
July. He saw the price panels as a part of the larger problem of 
general community participation and support. He saw too that the 
price panels themselves needed community understanding if they were 
to function effectively. He set about expanding the channels by which 
the message of price control could be carried to and from the people. 
He enlarged and increased the various advisory committees, he urged 
and provided for more effective use of the information or community 
service panels at the local boards, and at every opportunity he told 
the American public the story of the work being done by volunteers in 
the local communities. 


Introduction by Radio 

In Connecticut Bowles had given weekly radio talks, telling the 
people of his State what they needed to know, or do, about sharing in 
war time, and about fighting inflation. He continued these talks from 
Washington on a national hook-up. He asked each of his administra¬ 
tors, regional and district, to do the same locally, to go on the air 
for 15 minutes each week to explain the most immediate local problem 
of price control or rationing. Knowing the problems of the local 
boards at first hand, he emphasized support and recognition for their 

work. 

Thus he made them the theme of one of his first radio talks from 

Washington: 

* 

I can tell you best about the make-up of the local boards in my own home 
State of Connecticut, where I used to work for OPA. Up there we have 172 
boards run by 1,739 members. Here is a list of the different groups included 
among those members. There are 156 farmers, 209 housewives, 43 insurance 
men 20 doctors and 8 dentists, 47 nurses, 9< school teaclieis, 23 < industiinl 

83 



84 


V olunteers in OP A 


workers, 32 attorneys, 53 engineers, 127 storekeepers and store clerks, 21 clergy¬ 
men, 15 carpenters, 11 electricians, and 10 plumbers. 

From that list, which is pretty typical throughout the country, I think you 
will agree that our OPA local board members are a pretty complete cross section 
of the everyday people who are our friends and neighbors. Eevery group and 
every nationality, every social level and every religion is well-represented. 
And that’s the way rationing and price control should be handled among a 
democratic people. 

Let’s look even more closely at some of those people who are running the 
local boards up in Connecticut. Let’s review the local board in Essex, my 
home town. . . . 

He then described each of the 10 members: A veteran employed by 
a local manufacturer, a dairy farmer with a son in the Navy, the town 
nurse, the driver of a bakery truck, a housewife who was also soloist 
in the Baptist church choir, an oil salesman, a woman war worker 
from the CIO, a member of the school board with a son in the Navy, 
the owner of the feed store with a son in the Navy, and a manufacturer 
with two sons in the Army. He introducted them each by name; then 
said he knew there were hundreds and thousands of similar boards 
over the country, in Crossroads, Tex., and in Smalltown, Ala. 
“They’re all doing the same job for you and me and their country.” 

A few months later, on November 2, he talked again: “This is a 
people’s program. It will be successful only if you people understand 
it and help make it work.” He told them he felt it was definitely 
OPA’s responsibility to see that the people got proper information 
on OPA’s plans and projects; then, “If you have that information and 
if we in OPA do a good job, I’m sure w r e’ll get your full cooperation 
and support.” Pie proceeded to explain how OPA s operating cost 
was relatively low because of the thousands of patriotic volunteers 
working in the local boards. “If they were paid,” he said, “at the 
same rate as a Grade 2 Government file clerk, the cost to the taxpayers 
would be $3,500,000 extra per month.” 

With these and similar talks lie made the public aware of the work 
being done by volunteers and then attempted to eradicate the stigma 
which in 1942 had become attached to volunteer work in the price pro¬ 
gram. He was never wholly successful (the “snooper” charge was 
revived again and again by various trade journals), but he did succeed 
in creating an atmosphere which made a better price control job 
possible. 

Advisory Committees 

• 

At Bowles’ first press conference in July he told the reporters he 
considered it a primary duty for OPA to inform the public as fully 
as possible concerning the reasons for OPA’s actions. At his first 
meeting with the regional administrators, he added that regulations 


85 


Chester Bowles Gives a Lift 

♦ 

whenever possible should be explained to the people in advance, and 
that, if time permitted, the people should be consulted. In line with 
this expressed policy he expanded the consultation with industry ad¬ 
visory committees, pushed the appointment of labor members on the 
panels, and by administrative order established a consumer advisory 
committee. 

Consultation With Industry 

Industry advisory committees were prescribed in the Emergency 
Price Control Act, upon request of a specific industry, but on June 7 r 
1943, Prentiss Brown extended an invitation for full industry par¬ 
ticipation. He issued an order for the establishment of industry 
advisory committees throughout the agency, “as a matter of admin¬ 
istrative policy rather than as a grudging concession to the demands 
of industry exercising their rights under the act.” A few months later 
Chester Bowles went even further and directed that “no new price 
regulation or major amendment should be issued without consultation 
with a representative advisory committee from industry.” In addi¬ 
tion, district directors were instructed to set up industry advisory com¬ 
mittees in each district to advise on the administration of each major 
commodity. 

Later in the year Bowles went on the air to explain to the public the 
contribution of the 435 industry advisory committees with their 7,500 
members. He said to the public: 

You know, it isn’t easy for a businessman to work on these committees. 
Because the first thing we ask him to do is completely to reverse his normal 
thinking. A man has spent years in competitive business fighting for his particu¬ 
lar firm. He has competed with all comers, and has brought his company out on 
top simply because he stayed in there and pitched for that company. Then ho 
comes down to Washington to serve on an advisory committee with the OPA. 

First we ask him to represent—not in terms of the company he’s spent years 
fighting for—but the entire industry of which his company is only a part. That 
means he becomes a spokesman for his competitors and his own company without 
distinction. And then, when he’s done that—we ask him to go even farther, and 
fit that whole industry into the entire price control picture. It is a great tribute 
to American businessmen that they have been willing to do that kind of a job 
for the good of the war effort. And the men on our 435 industry advisory com¬ 
mittees are coming through magnificently. 1 

Labor Cooperation 

The Labor Policy Committee, a national volunteer committee com¬ 
posed of representatives from the AFL, CIO, and Railway Brother¬ 
hoods, had been appointed by Leon Henderson in June 1942. In March 
1943 Prentiss Brown expanded labor participation by requesting that 


1 Radio talk, Chester Bowles, April 18, 1944, Blue Network. 



86 V olunteers in OP A 

* 

each district director set up a volunteer District Labor Advisory Com¬ 
mittee and that a labor member should be appointed to each price and 
rationing panel. In issuing his request he made the following 
statement: 

Widespread consumer support Is indispensable to the success of the OPA pro¬ 
gram. The largest single consumer group in the country is organized labor, 
representing more than 10,000,COO 1 families. Organized labor is solidly in support 
of successful price control, rent control and rationing. The labor movement has 
the organized means for making its support effective. Provision must be made 
for actual participation in the OPA program by trade union members. 2 

Bowles took every opportunity to urge labor representation at the 
boards and to utilize the cooperation offered by labor. In October, 
at the convention of the American Federation of Labor, he was able 
to say: 

Today this close relationship extends all the way from the OPA offices where 
national policy is made in Washington right down to the grass roots where local 
OPA War Price and Rationing Boards are working effectively with union locals. 

Today, more than 700 representatives of organized labor are serving as mem¬ 
bers of 92 District OPA Labor Advisory Committees in every State in the Union. 

. . . more than 4,000 union members are serving as members of local War 
Price and Rationing Boards throughout the country, and their number is con¬ 
stantly increasing. 

Today, thousands upon thousands of union members are serving on plant 
transportation committees in an effort to cut gasoline use to the minimum. And 
thousands more, including many members of your ladies’ auxiliaries are serving 
as OPA price panel assistants in an effort to keep retail prices from selling over 
ceiling. 3 

Consumer Advisory Committee 

On November 30, 1943, by Administrative Order 88, Bowles estab¬ 
lished the National Consumer Advisory Committee as a channel for 
consultation with the people and “to make available to the operating 
departments of OPA the viewpoint of the purchaser and user of con¬ 
sumer goods." Thirty members were appointed to this committee by 
the Administrator: (1) from among those participating in the con¬ 
sumer programs of national organizations and (2) from representa¬ 
tive leaders in the field of consumer economics, marketing, clothing, 
food, and public relations. 

The first committee meetings were held on December 1 in Washing¬ 
ton and on December 7 the committee’s first recommendations were 
sent to the Administrator: 

The Consumer Advisory Committee wishes to express its appreciation of your 
action in setting up this committee, and of your recognition of the right of 

2 Memorandum, To all Regional Administrators and District Managers, Prentiss Brown 
March 9, 1943. 

3 Speech, Chester Bowles, American Federation of Labor Convention, October 9, 1943. 



Chester Bowles Gives a Lift 


87 


consumers to speak for their interest in formulation of OP A policies. . . . On 
the basis of our discussions, the committee submits to you the following recom¬ 
mendations : 

1. We recommend that for as many commodities as possible price ceilings should 
be established in dollars-and-cents terms. 

2. We oppose the proposed “average store mark-up” as a basis for price 
control. . . . 

3. In order that housewives may be better informed about community prices, 
we recommend that a price guide be available for housewives throughout the 
country and that ample lists of the store posters giving top legal prices he made 
available for each housewife who desires one. . . . 

4. We are vitally concerned with the problem of bringing low-end clothing 
lines back into the market. . . . 

5. We recognize that OPA cannot carry out its responsibility to control prices 
without the power to use subsidies where necessary. 4 

The national committee met quarterly and, because of its broad 
representation was able to bring both to the Administrator and to 
operating departments of OPA the viewpoint of the consumers in 
general and the women’s organizations in particular. The committee 
frequently complained that they were consulted only after a regula¬ 
tion had been changed, or too late to exert their influence upon a pro¬ 
posed change. The operating departments explained that they were 
usually working under great pressure and the timing of changes was 
frequently forced by events (or agencies) beyond the control of 
OPA. However, “if time permitted,” the committee was consulted 
and their records show that more than once they were able to exert 
influence for the benefit of the general public as opposed to that of 
some special interest hammering at the doors of a particular operating 
department. Even when these consumer representatives were unable 
to change the course of events, they were able to carry back to their 
organizations and thence to thousands upon thousands of consumers 
a first hand explanation of whatever action OPA was taking. 

In June 1944 Bowles initiated the appointment of consumer ad¬ 
visory committees in the district offices. As at the national level, 
the district members were to be representatives of the various women’s 
organizations of the area. Their function was one of liaison. They 
formulated and presented recommendations on such critical situa¬ 
tions as the black market in meat, clothing shortages, and evasion 
of the rent law. PXowever, their greatest contribution was undoubt¬ 
edly in taking back to their organizations and communities the ex¬ 
planation of local OPA situations as given to them by the district 
directors. Unfortunately, many district directors thought of the con¬ 
sumer committees as another chore added to an already busy schedule, 


4 Memorandum to Chester Bowles from National Consumer Advisory Committee, Decem¬ 
ber 7, 1943. 

749937—47-7 




88 


V olunteers in OP A 


instead of seeing in them a valuable tool ready for use. The majority 
of the consumer committees were not set up until the last year of OPA. 

The Homefront Pledge 

Not content with informing the people about price control and its 
local operation, Bowles wanted them each, individually, to take some 
positive action. For the millions who could not volunteer their time 
in the boards he encouraged the homefront pledge to enlist them in 
the fight against inflation. This campaign was the particular project 
of the Information Department and their community service volun¬ 
teers at the local boards. Community service members had been 
authorized as early as November 1942, but comparatively few had 
been appointed and no programs had been sent from the national 
office. Now, in line with the expansion of the information service 
at all levels, the community service members were reorganized, new 
members were recruited, and they were given the homefront pledge 
to carry to their communities. 

\j 

A June 1943 Office of War Information survey 5 of housewives and 
shoppers in 72 areas had shown how appallingly few understood or 
were even aware of their obligation under the price control law. 
Reduced to its simplest terms this obligation was printed on a sticker 
showing a housewife with her right hand raised repeating the pledge: 

U I pay no more than legal prices. 

“I accept no rationed goods without giving up ration stamps.” 

Under the general supervision of the district information executives 
and the community service volunteers these stickers and the accom¬ 
panying pledges to be signed were broadcast over the country during 
the fall of 1943. Mrs. Roosevelt and her housekeeper launched the 
campaign by signing at the door of the White House. Then in dis¬ 
trict after district OPA volunteers carried the pledges through the 
community; regular volunteers gave them to rationing applicants at 
the counters; price panel assistants carried them on surveys; the com¬ 
munity service members distributed them through 001181111161 * 8 ’ groups, 
women’s clubs, union meetings, and parent-teacher association meet¬ 
ings. Retailers displayed the large colored posters in their stores or 
used the mats provided by Information in their newspaper advertis¬ 
ing. In Louisville, 3,000 Boy Scouts called at homes getting the 
signature and leaving stickers, so that passersby would know that a 
home was a “Homefront Pledge Home.” In Cincinnati, Girl Scouts 
had pledge booths at the theaters. In dozens of cities school teachers 


6 OWI Survey, No. 73, June 1943. 



Chester Bowles Gives a Lift 89 

cooperated and thousands of school children carried the pledges home 
to their parents. 

In New Orleans where the pledge idea originated, the campaign 
was carried out by the OCD War Block Service in a 48-hour whirl- 
wind campaign. 250,000 people signed the pledge in those 2 days, 
and within 1 week the food prices of New Orleans showed a 5-percent 
drop. 6 

Under the leadership of the community volunteers over 200,000 
other volunteers participated actively in getting the pledges signed, 
and over 20,000,000 people pledged themselves to participate in price 
control, pledged themselves not to buy above ceiling price and not 
to accept rationed goods without giving up ration stamps. 

Second Anniversary 

January 5, 1944, was the second anniversary of the War Price and 
Rationing Boards. During the preceding 6 months Chester Bowles 
had used all the facilities of OPA to sell to the American public (and 
incidentally to the OPA staff) the idea of local self-government in 
price control. He had established channels for fulfilling his early 
promise of explaining OPA actions to the people and consulting with 
the people. In this short space of time 20,000,000 people had signed 
the pledge to cooperate; the number of board members, price and 
rationing, had grown to 76,000; the regular clerical volunteers to 
34,000; the community service members had more than doubled (from 
4,000 to 8,600) ; and the hastily recruited price panel assistants had 
become a trained group of 28,000. This second anniversary of the 
boards was marked by laudatory press notices from coast to coast; 
Governors of many States made special proclamations in honor of 
OPA volunteers; testimonial luncheons were given for them; more 
than 85,000 volunteers were presented with the OPA service award 
signifying hundreds of hours of service. Board chairmen received 
lapel pins in recognition of their work and each volunteer who had 
given over 500 hours received a specal pin. 7 

On that day, January 5, 1944, Chester Bowles presented to the head 
of the National Archives in Washington, the history of each local 
board written by the board members themselves, “an important chapter 
in the history of the Nation during the war.” 8 In a letter of con¬ 
gratulation to the board personnel he told them he had been reading 
the records they sent in, that he noticed how they solved the dozens 


6 Memorandum, Chester Bowles, to all local board chairmen, September 13, 1943. 

7 Advance Press Release, Second Anniversary, January 5, 1944. 

8 Advance Press Release, Second Anniversary, January 5, 1944. 



90 


Volunteers in OP A 


of human problems “that no regulation ever provided for.” He 
quoted for them the epitaph proposed by the chairman of a board 
in New England: 

“Here lies a member of tbe Warwick War Price and Rationing Board. 

He served without hope of reward. He received none.” 

He quoted also the comments written by the board members in Slier- 
born, Mass.: 

The members of the board always have been active in the community life 
of the town. They know and respect the people they serve; they know their 
way of life and their problems. The people they serve know and respect the 
hoard. They trust them sufficiently to present their problems honestly, without 
concealing doubtful facts, with the belief that they will get a fair deal . . . 

Most of all, every member of this board feels that no American citizen 
approaches the board as a suppliant asking a favor, but as one good citizen 
finding out from another good citizen his fair share of a scarce commodity. 
We are here to serve, not to exercise power, and the longer we serve, -the greater 
respect we have for the people we serve. 

His letter ended with a summons to continued effort: 

I wish I could assure you that the job is about finished, or that it will be easy 
from now on . . . But I can’t do that . . . some of our hardest problems may 
still lie ahead. . . . 

In his anniversary radio talk, Bowles interviewed three members 
of local boards: T. W. Thagard, a board chairman from Greenville, 
Ala., a farmer turned lawyer; Mrs. Lillian Turner, a price panel 
assistant from Denver, Colo., the mother of six children, three of 
whom were in the Army; and Henry E. Libby, chairman of the gaso¬ 
line panel in Island Falls, Maine, a farmer and soil conservationist. 
Bowles had each describe his service award, in behalf of the thousands 
of volunteers who were receiving their awards locally. 

He closed his anniversary talk with a greeting from President 
Roosevelt. The following paragraphs at least should be remembered 
in any evaluation of the work of OPA volunteers: 

We are the only Nation in the world where volunteers are doing this job. In 
the way it has been done, it’s as American as baseball. 

Perhaps some Americans have been impatient wdth their board at times. They 
may have had to wait in line too long. Or maybe they have been told “no” to 
their request for more gas, or more points, or more profit than the ceiling price 
allowed. So they “beefed” a little—because that’s the way Americans let off 
steam under pressure—but with rare exceptions they have complied with the law. 
The few chiselers who have turned up are objects of contempt to all good citizens. 
Whenever caught they will be punished and, whether caught or not, I am sure 
that they must always carry with them the knowledge that they have let our 
country down in this—its greatest war. 


Chester Bowles Gives a Lift 


91 


Thus Bowles discharged his primary obligation to the local board 
volunteers: he introduced and interpreted them to the public, and he 
publicly acknowledged and awarded their services to OPA. The 
ration board personnel were now secure and recognized in their honor¬ 
able positions; the price board volunteers were accepted and supported 
by the majority of the OPA price staff; they were no longer sneered 
at by the newspapers; they were at least on trial with the trade; and 
in general they were beginning to believe in themselves and their 
obligation to perform a difficult but necessary war job. By the be¬ 
ginning of 1944, Bowles had achieved a climate favorable to the work 
of the volunteers in OPA and had inspired those volunteers with a 
firm belief in the power of neighborly persuasion. 










■ ;i I "-jiitlo’i 



' 








’ 













t 









CHAPTER 

8 

Price Panel Assistants 


Price panel assistants, the price checkers of the first May and June 
surveys of 1943, were the storm center of all arguments about the use 
of volunteers in OP A. It was around them that the snooper charges 
flew. In spite of this, their number grew from the first survey to 
January 1944. But even 28,000 volunteers were not sufficient to make 
monthly visits to the Nation’s 600,000 food stores. They were certainly 
not sufficient to make additional surveys of the thousands of restaurants 
and service outlets. 

In 1943 when Prentiss Brown spoke in Milwaukee, community pric¬ 
ing had not been fully decided upon and the later extensive need for 
price panel assistants was not foreseen. He said then that a “small” 
group of price panel assistants would aid the price panel “to distrib¬ 
ute . . . explanatory material” and “to explain . . . the terms of 
the regulation” to retailers. April and May directives to the field 
were not much more explicit. Recruiting was a roundabout mat¬ 
ter through the board chairman and the OCD at the request of price 
chairmen. Training was almost passed over, the price panel and 
district price representative were to “make such arrangements . . . 
as required.” But actually by May, community pricing had become a 
fact and the role of the price panel assistant had become one of the 
utmost importance in the compliance program. The early failure to 
give dignity and definiteness to the position of these volunteers con¬ 
tributed to the later difficulties of recruiting for this, the most exacting 
volunteer job in OPA. 

The price panel assistants were asked to go out into the retail neigh¬ 
borhood to distribute explanatory material to the retailers, to investi¬ 
gate complaints, and to check on posting and price compliance. This 
took courage, initiative, tact, and intelligence. An OWI Survey in 
one city noted that the maority of the price panel assistants who stayed 
on the job were college women. The majority were also housewives 
and frequently they were mothers whose hours of freedom were strictly 

93 




V olunteers in OP A 


94 

limited. But taking the country as a whole the people attracted to, 
and willing or able to stick by, the survey work were as varied as the 
communities in which they worked. Their contribution in hours was 
equally varied. Some individual checkers gave almost as much time 
as the paid clerks. Others could give only a few hours when someone 
came in to take care of the baby. Some pushed the baby buggies ahead 
of them as they checked. One group of young mothers in a city suburb 
took turns, half of them tending the children week and week about 
while the other half checked. College students in all parts of the 
country took part in this work, returning veterans enlisted for it, and 
labor union members checked during their lunch hour. The common 
denominator of all price panel assistants was a staunch belief in the 
necessity for price control. 

At the beginning of 1944 the organizational problems surrounding 
the price panel assistants had not yet been solved. They were, in 
fact, only beginning to be recognized. The third of John Sly’s neces¬ 
sary conditions was lacking: the “permanent staff” was not adequate 
“to keep such a large organization moving intelligently.” 1 Because 
of this, recruitment of volunteers took a disproportionate amount of 
staff time, surveys were not made systematically, and there was an 
alarming backlog of price panel cases. 2 Very few people had yet 
realized the size of the volunteer staff needed to accomplish the 
avowed purposes of the program. Still less did they seem to realize 
the number and type of staff members needed to direct such a large 
number of volunteers. 

In February 1942 Sly had told the national office that from five to 
eight thousand paid district supervisors would be needed to adminis¬ 
ter an adequate corps of price wardens. A few months later, in Region 
II, he used 35,000 volunteers to visit the region’s 500,000 retail outlets. 
He used nearly 300 paid staff members to recruit and train these volun¬ 
teers. Of these staff members, 6 at the regional level and at least 1 in 
each State, were trained volunteer specialists, a total of 11 volunteer 
specialists in addition to the technical staff of several hundred. By 
contrast the price panel assistants of January 1944 seem very few 
indeed; there were no less than 35,000 for the whole country and, out¬ 
side of California, there were no volunteer specialists to train them. 

In March 1943 when the price panel program was being set up, a 
second attempt was made to impress upon the operating divisions 
of OPA the size of the task being undertaken. Bruce Melvin, then 
head of the volunteer section in the national office, wrote a memoran- 


1 Report on Volunteers in Region II, John Sly, Chicago Convention, July 1942. 

3 Of 131,890 stores visited in January, 47,995 were in violation, but only 12,122 confer¬ 
ences were held ; Price Panel Operations Report, Board Management files, January 1944. 





Price Panel Assistants 


95 


dum to Kenneth Warner, head personnel officer, asking for an annual 
budget of $811,460, “for promoting volunteer activities ... in 
the War Price and Rationing Boards . . . valued at $66,000,000 per 
annum.” He estimated that the program as outlined would need by 
July 1 (1943): 

1. 150,000-200,000 additional clerical workers. 

2. 200,000 volunteers for the programs proposed for Price and Informa¬ 
tion * * *. 

3. 1,000,000 trained reserves for peak loads. 

He requested a national office professional staff of seven people, with 
a comparable regional staff, and two or three people at each district 
office to administer the volunteer program. No one outside his own 
staff seems to have taken him very seriously. The Personnel Division 
knew that 30,000 clerical volunteers for rationing had been recruited 
and trained with only some incidental help from the district organi¬ 
zational staff. It took some time for the national OPA to realize that 
in spite of directives and change of name the board chairman and the 
chief clerks felt little responsibility for price volunteers. It took 
even longer for the national office to realize that the number of volun¬ 
teers needed for price work was many times the number used in ra¬ 
tioning. In January 1944 the total staff of the national office volun¬ 
teer section was still two professionals, and no budget was provided 
for any volunteer staff at the other levels. At the district level no 
paid staff was specifically assigned to the administrative supervision 
of the price volunteers. 

Technical Supervision 

Technical supervision of the price volunteers was the responsibility 
of the Price Division at all levels. Galbraith’s early and clear dis¬ 
tinction between the technical and the administrative supervision of 
volunteers was forgotten when the program was set up in 1943. Field 
Administrative Letter No. 23 told the board chairman to appoint a 
volunteer assistant supervisor with the duty, among others, of re¬ 
cruiting the needed volunteers through the Office of Civilian Defense. 
But only a handful of board chairmen did so. The price divisions 
therefore not only had technical supervision of the volunteers, but 
also, by default, for the first year of the program, the responsibility 
for recruitment, basic training, record keeping, and assignment of 
the volunteers. 

In January 1944, when the number of price volunteers reached a 
new peak, the price staff responsible for all these things was ludi¬ 
crously inadequate. At the national office one person was still carry- 



V olunteers in OP A 


% 

ing the price panel program single handed: formulating the surveys, 
devising the forms, and writing the instructions; consulting with 
Legal and the Training Branch, and Information; studying the return 
reports, and evaluating them for the Executive Office foi Pi ice. 

At the regional and district levels the same situation existed. The 
district price panel coordinator or program specialist was responsible 
for digesting all the regulations ° now delegated to the local boards 
and transmitting them in simple form to price clerks and panel 
members; for training price clerks and panel members in pi ice panel 
procedures; for recruiting the hundreds of price panel assistants 
needed for the district, for training them, and assigning them to in¬ 
dividual boards; was responsible in most districts for a weekly news 
letter to the boards; and everywhere was responsible for a monthly 
report to the region summarizing and evaluating the work of the 
boards of that district. It is safe to say that no price panel organiza¬ 
tion was developed in any district unless the district price executive 
and a large share of the whole price staff pitched in and helped. 3 4 

In local boards the situation was even more desperate. The records 
indicate that there were 4,300 price panels at this time but only 2,406 
full time price clerks and another 3,022 part time clerks—not even 
1 clerk to a panel. Where she existed, this lone clerk was responsible 
for at least a superficial familiarity with the grocery regulations, the 
restaurant regulation, the services regulation, the used durable goods 
regulation, and all durable goods regulations with fixed dollars-and- 
cents prices; for filing all price material and all retailer records; for 
answering consumer and retailer inquiries—or transmitting them to 
the district office; for assigning individual survey forms to particular 
price panel assistants; frequently was responsible for training them 
in specific surveys; and always was responsible for being tactful 
enough to hold their interest. 

This situation was impossible both technically and administratively. 
Price panel assistants were recruited 1 month and lost the next because 
no one at the board had time to assign new work to them. In the fall 
the Homefront Pledge Campaign interested millions of consumers and 
they cooperated by sending in thousands of complaints, many of which 
could be neither investigated nor answered. 5 Where surveys were 
made, the few panel members (usually five to a board at this time) were 
unable to hold conferences with more than a fraction of the violators. 
The very success of OPA’s publicity campaign with its sudden ex¬ 
pansion of board activity almost wrecked the system at this time. 

3 The Loose Leaf Service carried only the grocery regulation at this time. 

4 Weekly Progress Report, Region I, George Taylor to Kenneth Galbraith, May 15, 1943. 

B Although 25,000 consumer complaints were being settled monthly, the backlog in 

January and February was over 11,000, and in March this jumped to more than 17,000; 
report of Price Panel Operations,T-802, March 1944. 



Price Panel Assistants 


97 


In January the national office was taking remedial steps and by May 
the price panel staff at all levels had been increased by more than 300 
percent. 6 But in the intervening months price clerks left because of 
overwork, price panels assistants left for lack of work, complaints went 
unanswered, and the backlog of panel cases piled higher. The Price 
Division staff hung on grimly. 

The Emergency Price Check 

In March 1944 before many of the new price staff had been engaged, 
the national office announced an all-out emergency price check of every 
grocery store in the country. In spite of the really serious staff 
problems, Kenneth Hampton, the new chief of the newly organized 
Price Panel Section, felt it was necessary to push the grocery surveys 
if the momentum of the last few months was not to be lost. By this 
very insistance upon more and more surveys, the national office forced 
through the staff expansion in record time. 

Over the country survey work was still irregular and spotty but 
belief in the compliance value of store visits was growing. Back in 
June 1943, only 74,000 had been checked, but wherever rechecks were 
made the records showed improved compliance. In the District of 
Columbia where surveys had been made every month, the record 
changed from 76 percent compliance on the items checked in June, 
to 96 percent compliance on the same 12 basic food items by February 
1944. There had been 9,000 individual store visits between these 2 
dates. Because of this type of evidence from various parts of the 
country, the national office now demanded that every food store in 
the country should be checked within 1 week in March. To accom¬ 
plish this the district directors were authorized to use every individual 
on the district and local board staffs, not only the Price but also 
Rationing, Information, and Board Operations people; not only 
the volunteers, but also the paid staff. Every employee, compensated 
or uncompensated, was asked to cooperate. Across the country they re¬ 
sponded. The progress of one region provides an interesting example. 

The Emergency Price Check in Region III 

Until the beginning of community pricing in 1943, Region III had 
made no attempts at price panel activity. Since then the regional 
office had given it conceited direction. According to the regional 
history: 7 

In late 1943 the whole price panel organization—price clerks, panel members 
and assistants—had been built up so as to make it possible for each community 

6 Budget Records, January-May 1944. Monthly Key Operating Reports January-May 
1944, Office of Budget and Planning. 

7 History of OPA, Region III, vol. 1, p. 341, item 10K.20, OPA Bibliography 191,0-47. 



Volunteers in OP A 


98 

to fight its own battle against inflation . . . Already the organization had 
justified itself, but it remained for this period to prove whether it would be a 
continuing success or a “flash in the pan.” 

Region III now saw that to achieve the March goal further addi¬ 
tions would have to be made to both paid and volunteer staffs. Recruit¬ 
ment continued because “many price panel assistants had resigned and 
had to be replaced.” Not only were new price panel assistants re¬ 
cruited, but 223 new price clerks were also added at the boards. The 
number of the field staff increased until there was one supervisor for 
each 8 boards. Since surveys lost at least half their compliance value 
without panel members to review them, 525 new members were ap¬ 
pointed to the panels. With these reinforcements, Cleveland launched 
the Emergency Price Check. 

Side lights on the progress in various communities were reported 
in the Regional News Letter of March 25 : 

Saginaw first across the line .—Boards in the Saginaw, Mich., District w T ere the 
first to complete the check, with all stores being surveyed by 5 p. in., Monday 
afternoon—the first day. 

Four stores checked hy plane .—The four food stores on Beaver Island in 
Lake Michigan are only reached regularly in winter by mail plane. But to hit 
100 percent, those stores had to be checked. The answer? The Grand Rapids 
District Office swore in the pilot as a price-panel associate. The pilot flew to 
Beaver Island, checked the stores, flew back. Grand Rapids got its 100 percent. 

Hard luck story .—One West Virginia store-checker trudged 12 miles on foot 
up a devious mountain road to check one store. When he got there, he found 
the store had burned to the ground 2 days before. 

The total results showed a coverage of 99.9 percent: 6,870 volunteers 
“led and assisted” by 1,669 price clerks, specialists, and other paid 
employees, checked 58,791 out of a total of 58,862 food stores. Of the 
total stores checked, 19,961 were in full compliance, an increase of 
approximately 50 percent over the June survey results. Although the 
Region III compliance average was still below that of the country as a 
whole, the Cleveland office was justifiably proud of its accomplishments. 
In 8 months they had built their panel organization up to one of the 
most effective in the country. 

"Don’t Buy Another Depression” 

Milwaukee, in Region VI, was one of the two cities in the country to 
make a 100 percent survey of grocery stores in May 1943. In the 
Emergency Price Check of 1944 Milwaukee added another “first” 
to its accomplishments. Not only did its residents make a complete 
check of their grocery stores but they accompanied it by a w 7 eek of city¬ 
wide community education which excelled even Richmond’s 1942 dem¬ 
onstration. Under the slogan, “Don’t Buy Another Depression” the 
Governor of the State, the mayor of the city, public officials and civic 



Price Panel Assistants 


99 


groups joined with OP A to call public attention to price control. 
The district director who in 1943 had helped persuade Prentiss Brown 
to embark on the price panel program now inspired his city to show the 
country what price control meant. The demonstration, recorded in 
newspapers and magazines, gave national publicity to the work of Mil¬ 
waukee. One of the more sober articles described it as follows: 8 

The program was opened with an inflation meal at which the prices on food 
rose so rapidly during the course of the dinner, that the guests were able to 
secure only a cup of coffee and a roll for the 10,000 phoney inflationary money 
bills that were distributed to all citizens. 

During the campaign the schools devoted special time as did some of the 
churches, to a discussion period on the fight against inflation. Employers dis¬ 
tributed the phoney money bills with regular pay-roll checks, and stores and 
banks likewise aided in distributing anti-inflationary literature. Huge billboards 
and numerous placards emphasizing the slogan blanketed the city. 

Retailers carried special ads and used unique window displays to aid the 
campaign. The newspapers publicized it extensively and the local as well as 
national broadcasting stations contributed to the publicity. The campaign ended 
with an inflation parade in which huge, blown-up figures represented the blown-up 
prices that might result from uncontrolled inflation. 

The practical results of the campaign were shown in the final re¬ 
ports on the Emergency Price Check. Milwaukee was established as 
first among the large cities of the country for observance of price 
ceilings. 

Nationally, the reports of the emergency price check 9 showed that 
5,108 boards of the country participated and that 434,812 food stores 
were visited, 3 times the number covered in any previous month. The 
national average for compliance with price controls was just under 
50 percent. Region I, which in 1942 had the first functioning price 
panels in the country (Rhode Island), and the first complete surveys 
(Vermont), now led all the regions with a compliance average of 69 
percent. Among districts, Sacramento, Calif., took the lead. Here, 
where the first price panel experiments had been made in the West, 
the district average for compliance was 75 percent. 

A later comparison of the survey results, board by board, brought 
out even more convincing evidence of the effect of continued store 
checking. In areas where there were enough volunteers to make 
weekly visits the number of stores in violation dropped to 4 percent, 
and where there were no regular visits as many as 75 percent of the 
stores were found to be overcharging. 10 

Obviously in most of the country more volunteers and more surveys 
were needed. But enough successful survey work had been done to 


8 Bruno Bitker, “The Fight Against Inflation,” Wisconsin Law Review, March 1947, 
p. 209. 

9 Emergency Trice Check Summary, March 1944, Information flies. 

10 Press release, OPA 4330, May 25, 1944. 



100 


Volunteers in OP A 


justify the price panel organization’s pride in its share in the results 
reported in a letter Bowles wrote to the President the following 
month: 

April 7, 1944. 

Dear Mr. President : On this first anniversary of the issuance of the holcl-the- 
line order we can report that the task of stopping the rise in prices thus far has 
been carried out. 

It is true, as everyone knows, that there have been increases in some items, 
clothing, for example, but these increases have been fully offset by decreases on 
the price of other items, notably foods. Indeed the cost of living as a whole is 
slightly lower than it was a year ago today. This record—1 year of stable living 
costs—is unprecedented either in this war or the last war . . . 

The Compliance Goal 

The results of the March survey received much publicity. Some 
grocers complained that they were being discriminated against, that 
no other trade was surveyed so frequently. OPA answered that 40 
percent of the expenses of low-income families was for food, and no 
other trade affected the cost of living so keenly. However, the OPA 
proceeded to establish goals for surveys to ensure that other trades were 
not neglected. Grocery stores continued to head the list. Surveys 
aimed at specific shortages or to cover new regulations were to be sent 
out from the national office, and the regions were asked to supplement 
these sufficiently to make the following general coverage: 

1. Visit every food seller at least once a month. 

2. Visit every restaurant at least once in 2 months. 

3. Visit every outlet of one major service trade (laundries, dry cleaners, auto 
repairs, electrical appliance repairs, or shoe repairs) at least once a month. 

4. Visit every consumer durable goods dealer to check a chosen item at least 
once a month. 

The immediate effect of setting these survey goals was to focus at¬ 
tention upon the crying need for volunteers, and more volunteers, to 
check the stores. Forty-one thousand volunteers in March had needed 
the help of all the paid staff at the boards to check 90 percent of the 
Nation’s food stores. The new survey plan called for at least 125,000 
price panel assistants. The field staff wondered whether they could 
be recruited. 

Even without this need for an increase in volunteers, the district 
price staffs and the price clerks were continuously recruiting. After 
every big survey the volunteer corps tended to dwindle and another 
recruitment drive seemed necessary. Nearly every region and every 
district using price panel assistants reported the same dilemma. The 
loss was variously attributed to the unpleasant character of the work 
or to the instability of volunteers. A survey made in Washington 


Price Panel Assistants 101 

at this time indicated, however, that neither of these factors was a 
major element in the loss of volunteers. 

The OWI Survey 

In an attempt to analyze difficulties with volunteers, OPA requested 
the Office of War Information to make a study of price panel assist¬ 
ants 11 and their reactions to the price panel program. Between 
March 13 and 25, OWI interviewed 30 active and 29 inactive price 
panel assistants drawn at random from 8 of the 16 boards in Wash¬ 
ington, D. C. They also interviewed 15 out of 16 of the city’s price 
clerks, and 145 Washington retail grocers. “The interviews were 
full and lengthy.” 

The report brought out some very pertinent facts. First, both 
active and inactive price panel assistants were “strongly in favor of 
the OPA program”; 100 percent of the actives and 80 percent of the 
inactives believed in the value of the work. It was not disapproval 
which caused the volunteers to quit. Second, both active and inactive 
price panel assistants mentioned first among the things they did not 
like, “the feeling of snooping or policing,” but only two people gave 
this as a reason for quitting. Apparently the idea of snooping was 
more of a deterrent in recruitment 12 than in retention of volunteers. 
Third, both actives and inactives reported that the grocers were polite 
to them and even “appreciative of their work.” The interviews with 
145 grocers bore out this feeling of the price panel assistants. Evi¬ 
dently it was not grocer hostility which caused the volunteer turn-over. 
Why, then, did so many of the active volunteers of 1 month fail to show 
up for work the following month ? 

OWI found that the greatest single difference between the active 
and inactive groups was in their ability to deal with people. Exami¬ 
nation of the answers of the inactive group showed that 20 percent of 
them were never able to get over their timidity in approaching the 
merchants, and that they finally gave up on that account. Another 
20 percent had definite and valid reasons for quitting, such as having 
taken full-time jobs or having lost the help that formerly took care 
of the children at home. Nearly another 10 percent cited physical 
limitations, such as inability to do the extensive walking required by 
price checking, or having a sick child. The loss of this 50 percent 
seemed unavoidable. The other 50 percent of the inactives had appar¬ 
ently just drifted away. Either the price clerk had not sent them 

11 Memorandum No. 75, Price Panel Assistants, Bureau of Special Services, Office of 
War Information, April 27, 1944. 

u The OCD consistently gave this as a reason for inability to supply volunteers for price 
programs. However, the Pueblo, Colo., Histovy and the A-tlantci Ilistoiy mention this as 
a reason for losing volunteers. 




102 


Volunteers in OP A 


the survey assignments, or the price clerk had not made them feel their 
work was worth while, or the price clerk had not told them what 
happened to the violations, or had not given them sufficient training, 
or, in a change of price clerks, their names were mislaid. 

Half the loss, therefore, must be attributed to failures on the part 
of the harassed, overworked, and underpaid price clerks. By the 
same token, the volunteer procedure proposed in 1942 now seemed to be 
vindicated. Certainly the evidence showed that volunteers needed 
administrative supervision, just as the paid staff did. It showed 
that large numbers of volunteers tended to drift away unless someone 
was directly responsible for their work and actively interested in the 
results. From this report the district price staff learned what it al¬ 
ready knew: its price clerks were faced with an impossible workload 
and its volunteers needed more attention. 

The Volunteer Specialist 

In January 1944 the national office volunteer section became a part 
of Board Operations, and in February, Field Administrative Letter 
No. 23, the volunteer directive, was revised to read : 

The national, regional, and district board operations executives shall be respon¬ 
sible for securing, organizing, and administering volunteer participation in price, 
rationing, rent, information, administration, and enforcement activities. Volun¬ 
teer specialists shall normally be appointed by the regional and district board 
operations executives to discharge the responsibilities specified in this chapter. 

I he job descriptions for volunteer specialists were cleared by Civil 
Service, and the directive began to take effect in the field just about the 
time the OWI survey showed a convincing need of it. Unfortunately, 
the job description failed to contain any requirement for, or reference 
to, experience in organization and management of volunteers, or expe¬ 
rience gained in a volunteer capacity. This omission caused the Civil 
Service Commission to refuse to approve appointments of many well- 
qualified people whose previous experience had been wholly in “uncom¬ 
pensated” work. It also permitted the appointment of persons who 
had no volunteer experience, and who in some cases proved to be 
temperamentally unfit to handle volunteer problems. In spite of this, 
the new appointees were hailed with relief in the field. Between April 
and July 1944, 41 district volunteer specialists were appointed to be 
directly responsible for recruitment and basic training of volunteers. 

The Price Division planned additional surveys and requested addi¬ 
tional volunteers. 

The One-for-One Campaign 

To achieve this purpose, the national office volunteer section 
launched the one-for-one campaign in May 1944 in an attempt to 


Price Panel Assistants 


103 


double the number of price panel assistants in each board. The cam¬ 
paign was announced in the press and on the radio. In Bowles’ weekly 
letter 13 to the board members he said: 

We’re asking each one of you ... to recruit one price panel assistant from 
May 29 through June 10. 

I don’t think any of us realized the importance of these volunteers until our 
first food price survey. 

For example, in areas where there were enough volunteers to make weekly 
visits to neighborhood grocers 9G percent of the stores were complying with our 
regulations. Only 4 percent were in violation. But in areas where there were 
not enough volunteers as many as 75 percent of the stores showed one or more 
violations. 

The Labor Advisory Committee Bulletin of May 22, 1944, carried 
the same message to unions over the country and added this significant 
table: 

HERE IS THE RECORD FOR 4 TYPICAL COMMUNITIES— 

When stores were visited : Percent 

Occasionally_The number of stores violating was_75 

Monthly_The number of stores violating was_50 

Every 2 weeks_The number of stores violating was_25 

Weekly_The number of stores violating was_1_ 4 

Penny overcharges add up to inflationary dollars and put the “pinch” on you 
and your families * * * especially service men’s families and other income 

groups. And here’s how it works out: If the average housewife pays out only 
25 cents in overcharges on her weekly marketing trip, the annual cost to the 
families in a community of— 


5,000 population would be about- $16, 250 

25,000 population would be about_ 81, 250 

100,000 population would be about-- . 325, 000 

500,000 population would be about- 1, 625, 000 

1,000,000 population would be about__ 3, 250, 000 


Accompanied by all this publicity the new volunteer specialists 
and board operations officers went into the plan wholeheartedly. Many 
districts reported it a great success. Yet, when the number of price 
panel assistants was totaled at the end of June, it amounted to only 
46,481, an increase of 6,000 for the whole country. The board mem¬ 
bers and board staff had not responded with enthusiasm. It should 
be remembered that these were the same people who had been strug¬ 
gling with this problem for months. With the advent of the new 
specialists the board personnel had expected help, not another request 
for them to go out and recruit. 

13 Weekly Board Letter, May 24, 1944. 


749937—47 


8 

















104 


Volunteers in OP A 


Improved Methods 

In many districts the specialists took the attitude that they were 
not supposced to recruit for the boards, but to devise methods of re¬ 
cruiting and to appoint volunteer supervisors at the boards to do the 
recruiting. This may have been wise, but it took time. Unless the 
volunteer specialist was familiar with the community, her surest 
method of getting a volunteer board supervisor was by asking the 
board members to suggest someone. At the beginning of the program 
this would have been not only the most logical but the most acceptable 
method; now it frequently resulted in the appointment of the same 
captain of volunteers who had been working all along, or the tired 
board member who had already given most help. It did not bring new 
blood into the volunteer ranks. 

In one instance at least the district specialist enlisted the help of 
the very price clerk the plan was supposed to relieve. This price clerk 
herself began as a volunteer in the first June survey and continued 
as a captain of volunteers for some time after. When clerk jobs were 
difficult to fill, she was persuaded to take a full-time paid position. 
A grandmother with two college degrees she settled down to learn 
the duties of a price clerk but she continued to recruit volunteers with 
her left hand. When it seemed impossible to get volunteers for a large 
metropolitan board she was transferred to that spot and within a few 
weeks the number of volunteers had increased by 400 percent. No 
unwary stranger who came near was safe from her recruiting wiles. 
She signed them all up, the inquiring passerby 5 the complaining con¬ 
sumer, the retailers themselves and even, at one time, the policeman 
on the beat. After several futile attempts to find a supervisor for 
that board 14 the district specialist acknowledged the reality of the 
situation and designated the chief price clerk as the “volunteer” 
supervisor. In this capacity she recruited, successfully, both rationing 
and price volunteers. 

In this particular case the choice was a wise one but the habit of 
designating the person already most involved in the program ob¬ 
viously did not tap new sources nor increase the number of volunteers. 
Good volunteer supervisors were difficult to find. Field Adminis¬ 
trative Letter No. 23 listed the following among their necessary 
qualifications: 

A. Ability to work with others. 

B. Ability to organize and supervise the work of others. 

C. Maintain personnel data records. 

D. Act as liaison officer with the defense council ... in the recruitment of 
all volunteers . . . 


14 War Price and Rationing Board No. 10, Washington, D. C. 




Price Panel Assistants 


105 


E. Arrange training classes for volunteers on the purpose of the Office of 
Price Administration and any necessary training in the specific tasks volunteers 
are to perform. 

Generally speaking, people who had all of these qualifications were 
already involved in some type of war service by 1944. The specialist 
not only had to find them but persuade them to take on “one more 
thing.” The volunteer supervisor was the crux of the organized pro¬ 
gram and the district specialist may be forgiven for snatching at one 
where she could. Even if the 41 new volunteer specialists did not im¬ 
mediately increase the number of volunteers, they did improve and 
strengthen the price panel program. Their help was more essential 
to the price program than to the rationing program for 2 reasons. 
In the first place, the rationing volunteers worked in the boards under 
the eye of the chief clerk, where mistakes could be caught and rectified 
immediately, while the price panel assistants worked away from the 
boards in the stores, without supervision, and accordingly needed more 
thorough premilinary training. Secondly, the number of paid ration¬ 
ing clerks almost equalled the number of rationing volunteers: it was 
not too difficult for 1 clerk to supervise the work of 1 or even 2 volun¬ 
teers ; it was a different story when, as in March 1944, 2,406 price clerks 
were expected to supervise 41,000 price panel assistants. 

Under these circumstances the price program desperately needed a 
full-time person in each district to take responsibility for training 
and scheduling the price panel assistants. The volunteer specialist 
assumed these tasks. The price clerk, relieved of the major respon¬ 
sibility for training, and given additional clerk help in the big boards 
(in April and May 1944, the number of full-time price clerks was 
increased to 5,011) 15 now was able to process the returns from one 
survey before it was time to send out the next survey. Fewer volunteers 
could complain of not receiving regular assignments. Also, with a 
lighter load, the price clerks were able to keep better records of volun¬ 
teer time and accomplishments. Fewer volunteers were lost in the 
shuffle and more of them were impressed with the value of their work. 
Even where the number of price panel assistants did not increase, the 
total number of volunteer hours increased, the volunteers were being 
utilized to better advantage and the turn-over was decreased. 

In 1944 the price panel assistants became and remained the largest 
single group of volunteers in OPA, but there were never enough of 
them to carry out all the surveys needed for effective price control. 

It is not surprising that busy price clerks directly responsible for 
a heavy load of clerical work were not always successful in training 
and inspiring groups of volunteers. It is in fact greatly to the credit 


is t- 802, Summary reports, May 1944, Board Management Files. 



106 


V olunteers in OP A 


of price clerks, the volunteers, and the program itself, that only 25 
percent of the volunteers “drifted away” each month. But had the 
volunteer specialists been appointed at the beginning of the price 
panel program, it seems fair to assume that many thousands of volun¬ 
teers who went off to other war work would have been retained in Price. 

* In reviewing the program up to this time it seems obvious that Price 
was attempting an impossible physical task. It could not satisfacto¬ 
rily exercise both technical and administrative supervision with a 
force scarcely adequate for the technical aspects alone. The technical 
aspects went by default without price supervision, and the price staff 
could not handle the administrative aspects unaided. Lines of au¬ 
thority at first were confused and later were the, subject of acute 
interdepartmental conflicts and jealousies at all levels. In spite of 
these serious handicaps the emergency price check and other surveys 
produced a convincing degree of success in price compliance. By the 
first of July 1944, three points about the volunteer price checking 
seemed to be fairly well established. First, with enough price panel 
assistants doing frequent and systematic checking, violations in 
transactions checked in grocery stores could be reduced to 4 percent. 
Second, the number of price panel assistants needed to do an adequate 
job for all retail outlets was far greater than the number then on the 
rolls. And third, if approximately 125,000 price panel assistants were 
to be recruited, trained, and held in the program, it would require a 
vastly increased permanent staff to keep “such a large organization 
moving intelligently.” 



CHAPTER 

9 

Shifts in Emphasis 


In the latter part of 1944, after a year and a half of neighborly per¬ 
suasion, two significant shifts in emphasis began to take place in the 
volunteer program. One of these took the form of a self-regulation 
of business with an accompanying exclusion of consumer or housewife 
participation. In each of its phases “self-regulation” seemed to rep¬ 
resent a definite move away from the full community participation 
announced by Prentiss Brown and emphasized by Chester Bowles. 
The other shift at this time was a tightiling of compliance through 
the procedure of the “Administrator’s Claim,” with a decreased em¬ 
phasis on neighborly persuasion. 

The St. Louis Plan 

The first type of self-regulation of business was a local plan which 
recruited business employees on company time to make OPA surveys. 
Although carried out in several different cities, it seems to have been 
most successful in St. Louis and came to be known as the St. Louis 
Plan. 

In May 1943, St. Louis had been the first city of the country to com¬ 
plete the first survey of grocery store community pricing. The price 
panel assistants for that survey were recruited through the consumer 
interest committee by the OPA information executive. Price panels 
were later established in St. Louis, but were not very effective in the 
early stages, and showed no interest in using the large group 
of women who, under the information executive, made the first two 
surveys. 

After months of inaction both panels and price panel assistants 
were, according to the district director, 1 “practically nonexistent,” so 
in January 1944 “a completely new approach to the problem was 
made.” A new board chairman and new price panels were appointed, 


1 Memorandum, W. H. Bryan, District Director, to C. K. Dumars, Price Panel Section, 
Washington, D. C., November 27, 1944. 


107 




108 


V olunteers in OP A 


and John J. O’Fallon, formerly Chief of the War Block Service of 
OCD, headed up what became the St. Louis Men’s Price Panel As¬ 
sistants’ organization. Mr. 0‘Fallon conceived the idea of asking 
business concerns to donate at least one man-day per month of their 
employees’ time to work as price panel assistants. His first recruiting 
letter sent out over the names of two of the members of his advisory 
committee reveals his excellent grasp of public relations. 2 


July 20, 1944. 


To St. Louis Retailers: 

You believe in the self-regulation of business, don’t you? 

If so, here is your chance to help put business self-regulation into action— 

4 

in St. Louis. 

One of the Government requirements in the local OPA set-up is the creation 
of a “Price Panel Board.” Under the direction of this board, groups of volunteers, 
known as “Price Panel Assistants,” will contact merchants and others at the 
consumer level, to be sure that they understand how to post price ceiling lists 
and otherwise cooperate with the Government’s plan for fighting inflation. 

To do tins work the local office needs the equivalent of 300 man-days per 
month. This means that retailing is asked to furnish 300' men to devote 1 day 
per month to this work. Because the 2 organizations signing this letter are 
convinced that business should do its own educational job, we are issuing this 
plea for manpower. 

This job must be done by the local OPA. If business does not provide these 
voluntary workers, then they will be forced to recruit them from any available 
source. 

We have done a lot of talking about the ability of business to regulate itself. 
Here is a chance to demonstrate that it can and will be done. 

The work is not difficult. It consists of making fact-finding surveys and 
informing merchants about the posting of ceiling prices. The men allotted 
should be representative of business and possess the natural ability to make «a 
friendly survey—in a businessman’s way. 

We urge you to return the attached card showing your willingness to cooperate. 

Let’s handle this businessman’s problem in a businessman’s way. 

Cordially yours, 


Associated Retailers of St. Louis. 
Better Business Bureau of St. Louis. 


The goal, 300 man days per month, had been attained by November 
1944, 4 months later, when the District Price Liaison Office wrote to 
the national OPA: 


We ca ndepend on employees of business firms, i. e., bookkeepers, salesmen, 
etc., to regularly work about 200 man-days per month. 

From motion-picture operators, and other civic or union groups, we can rely 
on about 175 more man-days per month. 

Because these men attend training meetings we are making better surveys. 

And because of better surveys, compliance and relations with retailers are 
improving. 3 


2 Exhibit 6. St. Louis Price Panel Assistant Organization Booklet, Volunteer files. 

3 St. Louis Plan, Volunteer files. 





Shifts in Emphasis 


109 


While much of the success of the plan must be attributed to Mr. 
O Fallon s personality and leadership, the methods which he evolved 
would have gone a long way toward producing success with any group 
of price panel assistants. As far as these methods can be analyzed 
from the “St. Louis Book 5 4 they would apply equally well to any 
volunteer organization and are worthy of study in that light: 

1. The St. Louis men’s organization was given a dignified entity 
of its own. It was not merely an appendage to, nor a tool of, the price 
panels. 

2. It had a director of its own whose time and interest were centered 
in its success. 

3. The director had wide public-relations experience in organization 
work. He at once organized a staff adequate to service the plan at 
each stage of its action. He appointed : 

(a) deputies as continuing liaison officers with various organiza¬ 
tions, and 

(h) supervisors and deputy supervisors to preside at all meetings of 
price panel assistants, to know the assistants personally, and to work 
in liaison with the price panel chairman. 

4. Recruiting was done through organizations, business firms. This 
avoided time-consuming individual solicitation, and it gave an or¬ 
ganizational responsibility to the volunteer. 

5. The work was clearly defined: “informing merchants and making 
fact-finding surveys.” 

0. Definite training was given for each survey and defiinite dates 
were assigned for the training (two alternate days in each month). 

7. Turn-over and absences were discussed in advance and recruiting 
was continuous. 

8. Information on the results of their past work was given to the 
assistants at the monthly training meetings and through a monthly 
bulletin. 

9. The job was dignified through press and radio as a partiotic war 
service until it challenged the position of the panels themselves. 

One can only wish that the price panel assistants in general had been 
given such an organization, such direction, and such support. 

In analyzing the effectiveness of the St. Louis plan it should be 
remembered that its originator had been chief of the War Block 
Service of OCD. He knew how to handle volunteers. One suspects 
that it was not essential to his success that the price panel assistants 
were all men working on time paid for by the business concerns. This 
device was merely an added evidence of his resourcefulness. But it is 
the part of his plan which was most open to question. Although the 
St. Louis plan seems to have worked well at this time and place, when 
extension of the plan was later being considered the national office 
wondered whether it was wise to have all the checking done by men 
in a field where 85 percent of the customers were women. 4 5 It seemed 


4 Volunteer Records, Information files. 

5 Memorandum, Alfred Stanford to James Rogers, April 12, 1945, Information files. 



110 


V olunteers in OP A 


possible that with the best of intentions the business-employee men 
checkers might be unsympathetic to, or unaware of, the customer’s 
point of view. 

The Grocer-Consumer Anti-inflation Campaign 

The second and much wider effort toward self-regulation of busi¬ 
ness, although indicating a welcome interest in the trade, precipitated 
one of the bitterest fights within the agency over the issue of consumer 
participation. This campaign was announced as a grocer-consumer 
campaign, but the only tools by which the consumers could easily 
cooperate, the individual community price lists, were eliminated before 
the campaign began. In return the grocers’ associations promised a 
campaign to improve posting compliance in the grocery stores of the 
country. Something new had been added, and something taken away. 
Three groups of volunteers within OPA, the Consumer Advisory Com¬ 
mittee, the Labor Advisory Committee, and the community service 
members at the local boards fought bitterly against the elimination of 
the consumer price lists. A schism appeared in the agency’s infor¬ 
mation staff that reflected divergent viewpoints in the food division 
over reliance on trade associations. 

By the terms of the regulation grocery stores were required to dis¬ 
play posters for all items which were under dollars-and-cents ceilings. 
OPA supplied these posters, the most important of which were the 
meat posters and the community price list of dry groceries which 
changed every 3 months. Grocery surveys showed that all too fre¬ 
quently the posters were not “displayed” at all, or were put where it 
was impossible for customers to read them without a spyglass. After 
the Homefront Pledge the Information Department began printing 
miniature posters, or pocket-size price lists, to enable customers to 
keep that pledge. These were used by the community service members 
at the local boards as their follow-up campaign on the pledge. 

The first consumer price lists were sent to the regions in March 1944. 
Only 2,500,000 of the grocery lists were printed for this test period 
and no promotional publicity accompanied them. Seven out of the 
eight regions reported back that community service members and 
civic organizations quickly distributed the “limited number allotted 
to us.” 6 Region IV wrote: “Proof of the public use of the lists may 
be noted in almost any store, as women [take] lists from their purses 
and scrutinize prices before paying the bill.” But Region VII re¬ 
ported that its offices gave out the lists only on request, as the Regional 
Price Executive thought grocers would resent “this advertising of the 


0 Memorandum, Tom Donnelly to Chester Bowles, “Resume of Field Experiences with 
Last Quarter’s Consumer Community Program’’, April 11, 1944. 




Shifts in Emphasis 


111 


different prices in different group stores.” Evidently there were other 
objections of the same kind, because on April 10 the Consumer Ad¬ 
visory Committee wrote to Bowles: 

We understand that you are under pressure to modify the program of print¬ 
ing and distributing community price lists. We want to insist with all possible 
force that you continue and extend this program. Community ceilings are the 
only prices which the public can enforce. To drop a plan for putting these 
ceiling prices into the hands of consumers would be tantamount to denying 
the principle of public participation in the enforcement of price control. 

On April 18 lie reassured them and made his position clear to the 
field staff: 

We have had some conversations in the last 2 weeks with representatives of 
both large and small food retailers with respect to the information on prices 
for the four classes of stores. Some of them have argued with us that we 
should not put out price lists for stores in Groups III and IV. 

My position on this is very clear. Our policy is that, whenever we have 
dollar-and-cents ceiling prices which can be easily recognized by the consumer, 
we will make those prices available to the public. 

A few days later the Deputy Administrator for Information wrote 
to the information executives that the violations found on the March 
survey emphasized the need for getting price lists into the hands of 
the buying public, and further, that distribution of the lists was to be 
a project “for putting both our new and our revitalized community 
service members to immediate and effective use.” 7 He added that 
within a week the field would receive national office instructions on 
distribution of the June price lists and that a national campaign 
would be launched from Washington to educate the public in the 
use and availabilitv of the lists. 

The June meat and grocery lists were sent to the regions as prom¬ 
ised, 10,000,000 of each, but for reasons not explained to the field, 
no distribution instructions were sent to the information executives 
and no publicity was launched at the national office. In regions and 
districts where the information executives had initiative and deter¬ 
mination, the consumer price lists were distributed, as in March, by 
the community service volunteers and through such organizations as 
the OCD, the Parent-Teachers associations, and the League of Women 
Voters. In St. Louis where the information executive worked closely 
with the OCD Information Center, the lists were quickly distributed 
through the center’s 40 organizations. Almost immediately the Men’s 
Price Panel Assistant Organization announced they would not check 
prices if women were also checking, and they were scarcely mollified 
when the consumer member on the Advisory Board told them these 


7 Memorandum, Tom Donnelly, to all regional information executives, “Distribution 
Program for Consumer Price Lists,” April 22, 1944. 



112 


Volunteers in OP A 


were only the housewives doing their daily marketing. 8 The general 
regional response to the lists was favorable, but in districts where 
the information executive was not in sympathy with consumer par¬ 
ticipation, or was indifferent, the lists gathered dust in the corners. 
Lack of a national publicity campaign meant that the general public 
was unaware of the lists and few people asked for them at the boards. 

On July 3, Bowles was informed that no instructions had been sent 
and no publicity released because of an agreement with the grocers 
associations that the consumer price lists would not be “actively pro¬ 
moted,” but merely made “available.” 9 The staff memo reported an 
agreement reached on information policy which obligated OP A to 
drop the consumer lists entirely for the next pricing period, in return 
for the trade’s guarantee of an all-out campaign for visible, multiple 
posting of ceiling price lists in retail stores. The basic problem was 
seen as “one of getting grocers and customers together in a frank 
friendly effort to make price control week . . . [the grocers had] 
never fully grasped the possibilities of merchandising their honesty. 

The Consumer Advisory Committee remonstrated: 

Our committee was informed on July 18 by Mr. Bennet of the Information 
Department that the plan for the wide distribution of consumer price lists had 
• been abandoned and a retailer’s advertising campaign for “multiple, visible ’ 
posting had been substituted, with a definite commitment given the retailers that 
consumer price lists would not be promoted. 

If the independent retailers only objected to the comparative prices on the 
consumer lists, why were they not asked to show their good faith by promoting 
the distribution to consumers of the separate price lists ... If, as the asso¬ 
ciations say, visible price posting is going to mean compliance, can there be any 
objection on the retailer’s part to give his customer a list to take home, where 
she can study his prices at leisure and learn to carry out her part in maintain¬ 
ing price control? . . . 

If the object is to bring the retailer and consumer closer together, what could 
be more effective then to have the retailer himself give price lists to his cus¬ 
tomers . . . Unless the retail associations are trying to protect their violating 
members, they should not object to making this distribution part of their good¬ 
will campaign. 

With this background, and accompanied by continuing field re¬ 
quests for consumer lists, 10 the anti-inflation campaign got under way. 
Detailed instructions were sent to every regional and district infor¬ 
mation executive. This was a “must” program. By October, the gro¬ 
cer committees were formed in every city and an intensive newspaper 
and radio campaign was in full swing. Kits of display materials were 


8 Report on consumer price lists, Mrs. Marion W'eir, Consumer Member, St. Louis Price 
Panel Organization, St. Louis, Mo. 

9 Memorandum, Douglass Bennett to Chester Bowles, “Food Price Lists,” July 3, 1944. 

10 Memoranda, Jack O’Brien, Chief of Field Information, to Alfred Stanford, Deputy 
Administrator, and to Esther Cole Franklin, Consumer Relations Adviser, Information 
files. 













113 


Shifts in Emphasis 

furnished free to grocers upon request. The plan provided that every 
store should be festooned with banners bearing the slogan “Grocer- 
Consumer Anti-inflation Campaign.” The symbol showed a grocer 
and a housewife shaking hands, and one of the most popular posters 
carried under this picture the Words: “Let’s team up . . . to keep 
food prices down . . . for the sake of America’s future.” Elaborate 
and effective window displays were suggested by Washington, and 
in some districts prizes of war bonds were offered by the grocers’ asso¬ 
ciations to the school or club suggesting the best slogan. The cam¬ 
paign was launched in most districts by a large meeting to which 
grocers and board personnel were invited. Generally some prominent 
consumer was invited to speak. 

The national information office included in the instructions a sample 
shopping list, without ceiling prices, but with a column in which the 
shopper could insert the ceiling prices after she looked them up on the 
grocer’s poster. At the same time she was invited to report on the 
presence and visibility of the posters in that particular store and send 
her report to the local board. This part of the plan met with a cool 
reception from the grocers. Their committee said with frankness 
and some justice, that no such scheme was included in the bargain; 
they did not want to do anything to encourage housewives snooping 
around their stores. The proposed check list was used in very few dis¬ 
tricts and is not recorded as a success in those. 

The grocers’ associations carried out their part of the bargain 
handsomely. Enthusiastic reports 11 were sent into the national office 
on the cooperation of the local grocers, the excellent window displays, 
the amount of favorable publicity, and the number of radio spot 
announcements donated. According to OWI this was one of the most 
impressive campaigns the trade had ever staged, “second only to the 
war bond drive.” Posting compliance increased noticeably, but price 
compliance is seldom mentioned in the field reports. 

A national office report 12 made later sums up the situation. Dis¬ 
cussing the posting result, it says: 

These figures show marked improvement from June to December. 91.5 percent 
of the stores checked in December were in compliance as compared with 81.5 
percent in June. 

The price picture was not so encouraging. 

Stretching the campaign to its utmost period, September-December, a drop in 
violations of only 0.7 of 1 percent is observed in Class I and II stores. In the 

11 Field Reports, Grocer-Consumer Anti-inflation Campaign, October-December 1944, Vol¬ 
unteer files. 

13 Memorandum, Alfred Stanford, Deputy Administrator for Information, to James 
G. Rogers, Senior Deputy Administrator, January 30, 1945. 



114 


V olunteers in OP A 


preceding 4 months the drop was 0.5 of 1 percent. In other words, this cam¬ 
paign decreased violations by only a miniscule amount and hardly affected the 
already established downward trend at all. This is a failure. 

In Class III and IV stores a decrease of 3.2 percent in violations occurred 
during the campaign. This is at least a noticeable amount. In the preceding 
4 months the trend had been almost stationary—only 0.8 of 1 percent difference. 
This is a mildly good result. 

The community service members are not mentioned in reports of 
the Grocer-Consumer Anti-inflation Campaign, but the volunteer rec¬ 
ords show that their number dropped from 8,879 in Jline (the last date 
of the consumer lists) to 3,541 in October 1945. 13 The community 
service members who remained with OP A continued to request the 
consumer price lists in each monthly report. 14 

The national office was not unified 15 in its opinion but the final 
decision was to continue the campaign, minus the consumer lists , for 
another 6 months. In January the Consumer Advisory Committee 
again registered its protest: 

Since the primary objective of OPA is to keep prices in line rather than to 
decorate store interiors with posters of various kinds, the ultimate aim of any 
major OPA campaign must be increased price compliance. 

Ceiling prices for independent and chain stores can be printed on separate lists— 
meat and grocery prices for each group being printed on opposite sides of the 
same sheet. This would answer the only stated objection of the industry to the 
use of these lists—the “comparative price advertising” of the two store groups on 
one sheet of paper. 

Our knowledge of the housewife’s problems and psychology convinces us that 
most shoppers are not going to make out a shopping list and check its ceiling 
prices in the store. 

a. Because the shopping trip is usually a hurried affair and finding the items 
on the price ceiling lists, if they can be found there at all, puts an additional 
time burden on the schedule of the wartime housewife. 

h. Because of the fear of incurring the ill-will of a storekeeper upon whom 
the consumer may be more or less dependent for supplies by reason of loca¬ 
tion or credit arrangements or long-range association. 

At the risk of seeming repetitions, may we point out again that the only 
practical way, under wartime conditions of time problems, scarcities, and dis¬ 
crimination on the part of sellers, to arm the consumer with her weapon against 
inflation, is to give her a price ceiling list of her own which she can study at 
leisure and use in her own way in her fight against black markets. 16 

The February OWI Survey on “Women and Prices” was designed 
to show the effect of the Grocer-Consumer Campaign on the con¬ 
sumer. Two-thirds of the women interviewed remembered they 

13 Figures taken from the Volunteer Quarterly Reports, Volunteer files. 

14 See monthly reports Field Operations, Information files. 

15 Memorandum, Alfred Stanford, Deputy Administrator for Information, “Consumer 
Price Lists”, Information files. 

13 Memorandum, Consumer Advisory Committee to Chester Bowles, “Reinstitution of 
Consumer Price Lists,” January 24, 1945. 




115 


Shifts in Emphasis 

had heard “something” in the last few months about consumers 
helping to keep prices down, but less than one-half of 1 percent 
recalled the suggestion that consumers team up and cooperate with 
their grocers; the same percent recalled the suggestion that they 
check to see that ceiling price lists were posted. Two-thirds of 1 per¬ 
cent remembered being told to ask their grocers about prices that 
seemed to be above ceilings. The Grocer-Consumer Campaign was 
staged without the help of consumers and the consumers responded, 
as in the days of GMPR, by ignoring the campaign. It should be 
borne in mind that this period from the spring through the fall of 
1944 was also the period of the “bare-shelf” policy in food rationing, 
when the authorities in OPA and the War Food Administration, 
optimistic over an early end to the war, and apprehensive about sur¬ 
plus inventories, removed most foods from rationing. 

The survey also reported that 79 percent of the women of the 
country were in favor of price control, but only 7 percent had ever 
reported a violation. The most significant finding, according to OWI, 
was that almost 20 percent of the women reported they were afraid 
to question prices with the grocer, afraid of a scene or afraid of losing 
their source of supply. Another 17 percent thought complaints were 
ineffective anyway. Apparently the grocers and consumers had not 
teamed up. In the meantime general consumer participation in 
OPA’s program had almost reached the vanishing point. Consumers 
were generally “in favor” of price control but they had lost touch 
with it and no longer felt they had a part in it. 

Eventually the rise of food prices in the Bureau of Labor Statistics 
index, plus staff protests, 17 prevailed over the mid-1944 information 
policy, and in the summer of 1945, at the height of the meat shortage, 
meat lists (but not grocery lists) w r ere again distributed, without 
national publicity, in an effort to curb the black market. 

The Grocer-Consumer Anti-inflation Campaign was continued • 
somewhat sporadically all through 1945 with only slight variations 
in method and results. 18 

The Administrator’s Claim 

The legislation extending price controls in 1944 substantially altered 
the legal sanctions available to OPA in consumer complaint cases. 
Under the original act a consumer was given the right to sue a retailer 
for three times the amount of an overcharge or $50, whichever was 
greater, regardless of whether or not the violation was intentional. 

cT 1 / cD 


17 See folder, “Memoranda on Consumer Miniature Price Lists”, Information Depart¬ 
ment files. 

18 See Regional OPA histories for field results, OPA Bibliography, lWO-tf. 



116 


V olunteers in OP A 


OPA, which had the sole right of suit for violations in transactions 
within the trade, could not sue on a retail violation. In testimony on 
the 1944 extension bill, Bowles urged an amendment to ‘‘make 
the compliance activities of the volunteer price panels much more 
effective.” As enacted the amendment provided that in case the con¬ 
sumer did not bring suit within 30 days, the Administrator could 
assert the claim for damages, and the consumer was otherwise there¬ 
after barred. At the same time the defense of “good faith” was ad¬ 
mitted in mitigation of damages. Under the previous arrangement 
few consumers went to court and the great majority of overcharges 
went unrefunded. Now the Administrator’s Claim was subject to 
negotiation for settlement and in August Bowles delegated his 
negotiatory powers to the volunteer price panels. The panels could 
hear the parties, charge the retailer with a violation, and recommend 
to the district director a basis for settling the case out of court. 
Settlements were a matter of public record. In practice the panels, 
when violations were discovered in the course of routine price checks 
by price panel assistants, could bring the Administrator’s Claim with¬ 
out depending on consumer complaints. 

All price violations were to be settled by a refund to the United 
States Treasury, or to known customers, or both. For unintentional 
violations the retailer might be allowed to settle his case for $25, or 
the overcharge, whichever was greater. For intentional or repeated 
overcharges, the settlement might be three times the overcharges or 
$50, whichever was greater. If the overcharged customers could be 
identified, the amount of overcharge was returned to them; otherwise 
it went to the Treasury. In no case could the refund to the customer 
be in excess of the amount by which he was overcharged. Only by 
suing for himself could the customer get treble damages. 

It was the panel’s function to decide whether the violation was 
intentional or unintentional, and to recommend a settlement on that 
basis. The district director had to accept or reject the panel’s recom¬ 
mendation before the case was closed. The retailer’s part in the nego¬ 
tiation was voluntary throughout, but under the new act his alterna¬ 
tive, in case of a known violation, was to face court action by the dis¬ 
trict office. This gave the panels a more powerful tool of persuasion. 
It was a shift in the emphasis of neighborly persuasion, but it was 
still a settlement made on a democratic basis with members'of the 
local community rather than with outside Government agents. 

All possible precautions were taken to ensure that the panels would 
use their new power fairly in the interest of both buyers and sellers, 
and that the application of the law would be uniform throughout the 
country. Detailed instructions on negotiating the Administrator’s 
Claim were included in the loose-leaf service at the local boards and 















117 


Shifts in Emphasis 

printed separately in the price panel manual for each board member to 
study. The Enforcement Division took renewed interest in the pro¬ 
gram and in many places did much of the training. An Enforcement 
coordinator was personally responsible for the review of each case be¬ 
fore the panel recommendation was accepted or returned to the board 
for further action. 

Price Panel Reactions 

In spite of these precautions price panel reactions to the new author¬ 
ity were not entirely favorable. Those which had been operating effec¬ 
tively for a year, welcomed the new procedure. They had experienced 
the futility of sending to the district office the perpetrators of small 
but continued violations. They realized that the size of the Enforce¬ 
ment staffs prevented prosecution or even investigation of the majority 
of these small cases. They knew that these violators had come to look 
upon “referral” as immunity rather than the prelude to legal action. 
These panels had exhausted their persuasiveness upon the persistent 
violator and recognized the need for something more than a com¬ 
pliance conference. In this category there were instances of 
zealous boards disregarding procedural safeguards and in effect levy¬ 
ing fines, which led to talk in Congress of “kangaroo courts.” 

New price panels on the other hand, those established only four or 
five months prior to the act, resented this change in emphasis. Even 
though price control had been in effect two years, during which any 
retailer should have learned the regulations as applied to his business, 
these new panel members felt they had not yet had time to educate 
their communities. Until they, too, had faced the same violator three 
or four times they did not believe in his existence and the need for 
stronger action. Several regions reported a substantial number of 
resignations. On district 19 alone reported that 200 members had 
resigned. It took time and patient training to rebuild these panels 
and lead them to an effective use of the new sanction. 

Still another group of price panel members balked altogether at as¬ 
serting the Administrator’s Claim. This was the industry-minded or 
industry-dominated panel. Instructions for appointing price panels 
definitely forbade a member of any trade to act on the panel which 
handled compliance for that trade. Instructions also stated that the 
membership should be representative of the community as a whole. 
Both of these directives were sometimes disregarded, and in certain 
cases the result was a panel which refused to “crack down” on the 
violator under any circumstances. 

io t. E. Fairchild, History of Price Control in Milwaukee, item 10K.52 in OPA Bibliog¬ 
raphy , 1940-^7. 



118 


V oltmteers in OP A 


This should not be construed as an indication that businessmen on 
the panels were not in sympathy with the Administrator’s Claim sanc¬ 
tion. Quite the contrary. The majority of panel members at all times 
were businessmen and the great majority of them believed firmly in 
the need for price control. They also believed that the honest retailer 
should be protected against the chiseller and, once convinced that a 
violation was intentional, they were likely to be the sternest members 
of the panel. But undeniably some price chairmen and some panels 
were more concerned with their post-price-control popularity in the 
trade than with their obligations as panel members. Occasionally 
such panels resigned and occasionally they were asked to resign. More 
frequently the members were reassigned to other more representative 
panels, or a leavening of new members was added to the original group. 
This too, took time and careful attention from the board operations 
officers who were now responsible for panel appointments. Where the 
board executives were not alert or not in sympathy with the price pro¬ 
gram, it was possible for an obstructing price chairman to prevent 
decisive action for many months. 

Even the first group mentioned, those who saw the need for and 
welcomed the new authority given them, were frequently hesitant to 
use it. The first instructions sent out from the national office were 
anything but clear and, for a time at least, the legal interpretations of 
the Enforcement staff were not in agreement with the written instruc¬ 
tions of the loose-leaf service. In addition, the various forms were 
complicated, and for some time the price clerks received no official 
instructions on them. 

For all of these reasons most district offices were slow to urge the 
panels to use their new negotiatory power. The national results at 
the end of 6 months were negligible. 

The Hearing Panel, Washington, D. C. 

To remedy this situation and to ensure thorough training, many 
districts set up hearing panels, or superpanels, to act for several coun¬ 
ties or for a whole city. To these hearing panels the individual panels 
referred cases that seemed to warrant the negotiation of the Adminis¬ 
trator's Claim. In the District of Columbia the hearing panel met at 
the district office. It was made up of five outstandingly successful 
members of different board panels. Each meeting was also attended 
by the price chairmen of the local panels who had referred the cases 
to be heard. This method served the dual purpose of having on hand 
a panel member familiar with the past history of the case and of edu¬ 
cating the rotating members one by one in the intricacies of taking 
Administrator’s Claims. For the first 5 months after July 1944 only 
the hearing panel was allowed to take an Administrator’s Claim in 





Shifts in Emphasis 


119 


Washington, D. C. Meetings of the hearing panel were attended by 
the District Price Executive and the Price Panel Coordinator. The 
District Price Attorney and Commodity Specialists could be called at 
a moment’s notice. The District Information Officer presided over 
the press table and the newspapers were always well represented. The 
last meeting of this hearing panel was held in February 1945. The 
local panels, by then, were all taking Administrator’s Claims, and it 
was felt that the training panel had served its purpose. 

Results 

From the beginning of 1945 the national number of Administrator’s 
Claims increased rapidly. As is shown in the following table, before 
the end of the program millions of dollars of over-ceiling charges 
were being returned either to overcharged customers or to the United 
States Treasury. 

Price panel activity — lOJ/S-J/G 1 



Jan.-June 
1945 

July-Dee. 

1945 

Jan.-June 

1946 

Total 

Number of reported violations... - - - 

Number of conferences- - - -- - - 

Number consumers receiving refunds- - 

Amount of money refunded--- 

Administrator’s claims: 

Overcharges _-_ _ -- _ 

521, 877 
239, 289 
29, 960 
$943, 465 

$962, 302 
18, 453 
$1, 444, 249 
$107, 393 

4, 339 

426, 535 
184, 085 
18, 521 
$671, 708 

$1,088, 213 
18, 763 
$1,610, 293 
$98,148 
6,211 

426, 968 
200,129 
8, 742 
$511,072 

$1, 048,176 
33, 834 
$2, 078,116 
$185, 806 

7, 583 

1,375,380 
623, 503 
57, 223 
$2, 126, 245 

$3, 098, 691 
71, 050 
$5, 132, 658 
$391, 347 
18,133 

Number of settlements.- _ - -- - - 

Amount to Treasury- - 

Refunds to customers-- ---- - -- 

Number receiving refunds .. .. - - - 


A total of 71,050 sellers paid $5,132,658 to the United States Treasury as a result of overcharges totaling 
$3,098 691. 

Out of 1,375,380 reported cases of violation for . . . [these] 18 months, conferences were held on 623,503 
cases. These conferences resulted in 75,356 consumers receiving total refunds of $2,517,592. 


i Price Board management, Statistical Reports, July 1946. 

Almost 50 percent of all reported violations resulted in conferences 
but onlv 12 percent of the conferences resulted in settlements of the 
Administrator’s Claim. The panels could scarcely be accused of abus¬ 
ing their authority or of exploiting the retailers. However, as a Re¬ 
al onal Executive in Cleveland noted, this was a sufficient deterrent to 
prevent violations from becoming popular and was probably more 
effective than stricter measures imposed on the community from out¬ 
side. 

After 3 years of price control the educational phase of the price 
panel work took second place. Few men called to conference after 
that date were ignorant of their obligations. When new amendments 
went into effect the panels again held educational trade meetings and 
educational conferences. If a first offender was called in, they again 
used neighborly persuasion, but most of their time for the last year 
and a half of price control was spent in negotiating settlement for the 
Administrator’s Claim against over-ceiling charges. 


749937—47 


9 





















































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" 











































































































■' 
























CHAPTER 

10 

The Organized Volunteer Program 


No real appraisal can be made of the “procedure”, the administra¬ 
tive supervision manual of the volunteer program, before 1945, when 
national directives had cleared the way for its use and a staff had been 
assigned to carry it out. Up to this time OPA had been using and. 
losing volunteers without any clearly defined methods for their re¬ 
cruitment and supervision. 

The techniques of price control and rationing were new to the 
United States in the years 1942—46. The techniques of local volunteer 
administration of a Federal law were also new. But the techniques 
of recruiting, training, and using volunteers had been used long and 
successfully in the United States. The achievements of the Red Cross, 
the neighborhood settlements, and the Parent-Teachers Association, 
to mention only a few, have been built upon the continued successful 
use of part-time volunteers. A knowledge of these methods was easily 
available to OPA from the beginning, but the need for them was ob¬ 
scured by OPA’s relationship with the local defense councils and the 
Office of Civilian Defense. 

Review 

As has been noted, the local councils of defense staffed the early 
rationing boards. In general these councils felt a responsibility for, 
and continued to supply whatever volunteers were needed for the ra¬ 
tioning boards. The work there was obviously urgent and people were 
eager to help in those first days after entrance into the war. Recruit¬ 
ment was no serious problem. Since, after the first few months, the 
clerical volunteers seldom exceeded the paid clerks in number and 
never averaged more than six to a board, their supervision likewise 
presented only sporadic and occasional problems. Peak load volun¬ 
teers, to be sure, far outnumbered the clerks, but these were from al¬ 
ready organized groups, school teachers, and parent-teacher groups 
who, under their own supervisors and outside of the boards, got out 

121 



122 


V olunteers in OP A 


the Ration Books or handled registrations. Original arrangements 
for peak load volunteers were made nationally. They presented no 
problem of recruitment and they worked under their own supervisors. 

OPA’s need for its own recruitment facilities seemed extremely re¬ 
mote when, on April 15, 1942, the Office of Civilian Defense was spe¬ 
cifically directed to assist other Federal agencies by making available 
to them the services of the civilian population. 1 In line with this di¬ 
rective the OCD set up volunteer standards of work and established 
national awards for service performed. Theoretically, from then on, 
when OPA needed volunteers, the national office had merely to notify 
the national OCD, which in turn notified the local councils of the spe¬ 
cific types and number needed. For the first year thereafter and in 
most places this proved to be generally effective. 

However, even in the early months of rationing, the large city 
boards felt the need for more volunteers than OCD could furnish and 
for more supervision than OPA could give. One large board in New 
York City, unable to fill its needs through OCD, made arrangements 
with the Red Cross for a volunteer staff with its own supervisor. 
When Region II attempted to recruit 50,000 volunteers for the cost-of- 
living posting survey, its only real failure to obtain volunteers accurred 
in New York City through the OCD. There OCD and the American 
Women’s Voluntary Services declined to recruit for the same program 
although neither was able by itself to furnish a sufficient number. 2 In 
November 1942 the San Francisco OPA experienced the same difficulty 
in getting enough volunteers for its boards. There the district director 
diagnosed the primary trouble as lack of adequate supervision, and 
installed the first district volunteer supervisor. 

Meanwhile, in the summer of 1942 the national OPA was discussing 
plans for a greatly expanded use of volunteers in the price program 
at the local boards. The volunteer section made a study of the use 
of volunteers in OPA up to that date (September 1942), and on the 
basis of the findings wrote a “volunteer procedure.” Prepared by 
Dorothy Fredenhagen, this manual used the accepted techniques for 
training and supervision of volunteers and adapted them to the OPA 
structure of national, regional, district, and local board operation. It 
was careful to establish a direct line of authority and responsibility 
from the national office to the local boards. It was careful also to 
provide for supervision of the volunteers by a volunteer at the local 
boards, but it placed responsibility for providing that volunteer super¬ 
visor upon a paid employee, called a volunteer specialist, at the dis- 


1 The Office of Civilian Defense had been established May 20, 1941, by Executive Order 
No. 8757 ; this clarification of its function was made in Executive Order No. 9134. 

2 John Sly, “Report on Volunteer Work in Region II”, Chicago Price Executives’ Confer¬ 
ence, June 1942. 



123 


The Organized Volunteer Program 

trict level. General administrative responsibility was placed in the 
office of local board operations, the office already administratively re¬ 
sponsible for the local boards. Technical responsibility for the use 
to be made of volunteer assistance was placed with the office responsible 
for the specific program to which the volunteers were to be assigned. 
Relationships with the Office for Civilian Defense were carefully de¬ 
fined. Qualifications for and duties of the volunteer assistance super¬ 
visor were set forth in particular detail. The methods of recruit¬ 
ment and training outlined were acceptable to OCD. Maintenance of 
a volunteer roster and records were specifically designed to con¬ 
form with OPA needs for information and OCD requirements for 
acceptance into the United States Citizens Services Corps. 

Two things militated against the adoption of the procedure at this 
time. First, most of the top exechtives considering this problem w T ere 
unfamiliar with the techniques of handling volunteers. They saw no 
reason for administrative supervision of volunteers other than that 
given to all employees. They felt that the administrative problem 
really belonged to the Personnel Division and that all recruitment 
should be referred back to OCD. In line with this thinking, on No¬ 
vember 27, 1942, the Volunteer Section was transferred to the Per¬ 
sonnel Division and its chief was made Liaison Officer with OCD. 
The second obstacle to acceptance of the procedure in the fall of 1942 
was the still unresolved conflict between the Legal and Price Divisions 
for technical supervision of the volunteers. Until this major issue 
was settled it appeared unlikely that the national office would allow 
any volunteer procedure to go to the field. 

In the interim, as has been noted, the volunteer supervisor in San 
Francisco, was demonstrating the effectiveness of a specialist who 
could talk with the volunteers in their own language and whose main 
responsibility was for the volunteer phase of the program. “With 
better working conditions, a definite schedule and adequate training, 
the individual hours increased from an average of 5 hours a month 
to 35.” 3 Region VIII adopted the proposed procedure on its own 
initiative. 

When the volunteer participation in community pricing was an¬ 
nounced in the spring of 1943, it was under the technical supervision of 
the Price Division. The Volunteer Procedure, several times revised, 
was sent to the boards on May 3 as Local Board Administrative Letter 
No. 23. The accompanying memorandum to regional administrators 
and district directors said that “volunteers are important to the success 
of OPA’s program. The efficient utilization of volunteer workers 
cannot be underestimated either in terms of community acceptance 


3 Fredenhagen, History of Volunteers, ch. IV. 



124 


Volunteers in OP A 


of OPA’s program or in terms of the services they render in OPA’s 
operations on a limited budget.” But it will be recalled that neither 
the memorandum nor the local board letter placed responsibility for 
getting the volunteers upon any specific division or person at the 
district or regional level. In general terms it was content to say that 
“requests for volunteers should be submitted by the board chairman 
to the local defense council,” and that the “board chairman shall 
appoint a volunteer assistance supervisor.” By the end of June 1943, 
therefore, in spite of 2 additional staff memoranda from the Admin¬ 
istrator himself, only half the boards of the country had recruited 
price panel assistants. A year later, in July 1944, only 1,112 out of 
5,500 boards were yet reported as having volunteer assistance super¬ 
visors. Clearly, most of the price panel assistants who were recruited 
were not being supervised according to the directive. 

In line with OCD standards, in February 1944 a reorganization 
occurred which, with an accompanying change in Letter No. 23, 
brought the idea of an organized volunteer program a long step nearer 
to fruition. Discouraging experience with previous arrangements 
persuaded the national office that volunteer specialists should be tried 
in the administration of the program. The Volunteer Section was 
again put into board operations and administrative responsibility 
for the volunteer program was given to volunteer specialists at the 
district and regional levels. Failure to require volunteer experience 
as a prerequisite for the job of volunteer specialist resulted in some 
inept appointments, but almost anyone willing to take responsibility 
was an aid to the overworked Price Division at this point. In spite of 
the appalling turn-over of volunteers in the price panel assistant corps, 
now the largest volunteer group in the program, district directors 
were slow to appoint the specialists. By July 1944, only 41 district 
and only 4 regional volunteer specialists had been appointed. In spite 
of continual urging by the national office, the field administrators 
still reflected considerable indifference, or inertia, or positive dis¬ 
belief in the volunteer program, and by 1945 only 5 regional specialists 
(out of a possible 8), 70 district volunteer specialists (out of a pos¬ 
sible 93), and 2,271 volunteer board supervisors (out of a possible 
5,600) had been appointed. Only in certain areas could the “organized 
volunteer program” be said to be in effect. 

Relationships With OCD 

OPA field relationships with the Office of Civilian Defense de¬ 
teriorated steadily between 1942 and 1945. Before appraising the 
1945 accomplishments of the volunteer specialists, therefore, it is 
necessary to bear in mind the interagency difficulties and the resulting 
recruitment problems which the specialists inherited. 







125 


The Organized Volunteer Program 

In the first place, OCD had only an advisory relationship with its 
900 councils of defense. Any OPA program approved by the national 
OCD could be certain of an approving memorandum to, but not of 
acceptance by, the local councils. In addition, the President’s di¬ 
rective gave the OCD the right of “approval” of volunteer programs. 
Not only the national, but also the State offices of OCD sometimes 
failed to approve the use of volunteers for price work, and accordingly 
refused to request the local councils to supply them. For various 
reasons the local councils themselves at times refused to supply volun¬ 
teers even when approval had come from above. Whenever this oc¬ 
curred and a determined Price Division thereupon turned to some 
other source, complaints were passed back along to the national offices; 
and the tie between the two organizations was weakened. 

OPA shortcomings in supervision of volunteers gave OCD con¬ 
siderable cause for complaint. The failure of board clerks (both 
rationing and price) to keep adequate volunteer records during the 
first 2 years was a constant irritation to OCD. According to the 
agreement between the agencies, all volunteers from whatever source 
were to be registered with OCD, their hours of service were to be 
reported to OCD, and at the apropriate time, the volunteer was to be 
accepted into the United States Service Corps. These instructions 
frequently failed to filter through to the boards, and even where they 
did, many clerks were too engulfed in the daily public demands to re¬ 
member the reports owed to another agency. To OCD this was the 
last straw reflecting the inadequacy of an agency which supervised its 
volunteers so poorly that approximately 25 percent of them were lost 
in any given month. The file of correspondence 4 between OPA and 
OCD bears witness to numerous other difficulties which were”eventually 
ironed out at the national level, but which added to the problems of 
recruitment at the local level. 

Taken as a whole OCD was an indispensable source and facility in 
furnishing thousands and thousands of volunteers for the OPA pro¬ 
grams, especially in the early period; but in some sections they fur¬ 
nished none, in others they furnished only clerical workers, and by 
1944 the OPA demand was so great that OCD seemed unable to fill 
all the requests in any section. Under these circumstances OPA 
district offices turned haphazardly to other sources, to the Red Cross, 
the American Women’s Voluntary Services, and other women’s organi¬ 
zations, or to the churches for additional volunteers. OPA needed a 
recruitment policy of its own. 

The revised letter No. 23 came out in February 1944, not only 
establishing the position of volunteer specialist, but also modifying 


4 OCD correspondence, Volunteer files. 



126 


Volunteers in OP A 


the requirement that volunteers should be recruited through OCD. 
A part of the new agreement read: 

If it is decided [after consultation] that the local volunteer office [OCD] cannot 
secure the necessary number and types of volunteers, the volunteer assistance 
supervisors shall be requested to recruit from other sources. 

Accomplishments 

The goal of the organized program was to recruit and train, for 
the use of the operating divisions of OP A, the requisite number and 
type of volunteers. 

This goal as it related to the clerical volunteers was comparatively 
modest in its aims (there were between 30 and 40 thousand clericals 
throughout the rationing program), and in many cities the primary 
supervision was given by the OCD itself. In these places an OCD 
volunteer supervisor was assigned to the district or central office and 
all requests for clerical help were channelled through her. She also 
received from the chief clerks the reports of volunteer attendance and 
forwarded them to the OCD office. In smaller towns and areas where 
OCD was not active, the number of clericals required per board was 
so small that they do not seem to have presented a difficult problem. 
In 1944 when district specialists were engaged and the number of 
board volunteer supervisors was greatly increased, the organized pro¬ 
gram for clerical volunteers continued successfully on practically the 
same basis as from the beginning. 

Student Clericals Region VI 

Region VI with headquarters in Chicago seems to have been an 
exception to the above use of clerical volunteers. As early as February 
1943 they were in dire need of increased volunteer assistance and began 
developing a plan whereby high-school students with honor grades 
gave one full school day every second week to volunteer work in the 
war price and rationing boards. This was an organized plan in every 
sense of the word. Like the St. Louis men’s organization it is worthy 
of study both because it indicates another of the largely untapped 
sources of volunteers and because it indicates the success possible with 
almost any group of volunteers under a well organized plan. 

The student project was pioneered in Quincy, Ill., February 1943, 
when 80 students were inducted, each to work 1 day every other week. 
This meant that 8 students were working in the board every day 
but Saturday. In March the program was extended to the whole 
State and all State school superintendents of Illinois were officially 
asked by the United States Government to cooperate. During the 
next 3 y 2 months the plan was inaugurated in 265 local boards and 









The Organized Volunteer Program 


127 


oOo educational institutions participated by supplying over 16,000 
honor students for the work. Twenty percent of these students chose 
to continue the work during their vacations. Students, educators, 
and OPA staff all seemed to be in agreement as to the success of the 
plan, and by fall 1943 it was extended to all war price and rationing 
boards in Kegion VI. 

At this time complete details for installation of the student volun¬ 
teer program were given to the district representatives responsible 
for the work. The plan was presented to school superintendents, to 
the board chairmen, and to civic leaders first by letter and then by 
personal interview. Publicity was arranged. Only after these prep¬ 
arations were the students themselves approached. Following are 
the detailed instructions for the presentation to the students and the 
later induction of students at the local boards: 

7. (a) A general mass meeting held in one school attended by all students 
and the parents of honor roll pupils, members of the War Price and Rationing 
Board, school authorities, and heads of the municipal government. It is sug¬ 
gested that honor roll students should sit in a group preferably, on the platform 
immediately behind the speaker. 

(&) Speech made by either board chairman, community service member, mayor, 
member of OCD or prominent citizen at mass meeting. 

(c) Announcement of the names of honor roll students eligible for participa¬ 
tion. 

(d) Parental consent obtained during or by announcement at close of meeting 
(See Form SV-1.) 

(e) Signing of student volunteer pledge. (See Form SV-9.) 

(/) Meeting should be adequately covered by the press and good publicity 
secured. Community service member should arrange with newspaper photo- 
raphers for group pictures, which with the names of the student volunteers 
participating, should appear in the press. 

8. On the following Monday students from the first school assigned for that 
day will report to the chief clerk of the War Price and Rationing Boards. 

(a) They will be sworn in by the chairman of the board and sign the oath of 
office. (See Form SV-8.) (Alternate arrangement—if facilities permit, stu¬ 
dents can be sworn in collectively at mass meeting.) 

(&) Oaths of office and pledges will then be filed in the local board. 

(c) Chief clerk will delegate one or more students to each panel clerk who 
will assign and train the student in the work of that department. The district 
representative should leave with the chief clerk a list of the duties which can 
be performed by the students. 

9. It is extremely important that a close follow-up by district representatives 
be maintained until the program is functioning correctly. 

10. It is the responsibility of the community service member to keep the public 
interest alive. Timely newspaper articles or other releases should be made at least 
every 2 weeks. These releases should cover unusual services of the student, using 
their names and pictures; comments of school heads, civic leaders, representa¬ 
tives of the OCD and local government officials should be obtained for publica¬ 
tion ; expressions from the board chairman and chief clerk, emphasizing that 
the excellent service being rendered the public is due to the diligent and in- 


128 


Volunteers in OP A 


telligent assistance volunteered by the youth of the community. Community 
service members should send report to district information officer on the first 
and fifteenth of each month, covering the activities, attaching clippings of news¬ 
paper releases. 5 

Any program using volunteers could have profited by a study of these 
instructions. 

Unfortunately no such well-organized plan was used in recruiting 
price panel assistants and by the beginning of 1945 the volunteer price 
program was definitely on trial. Records such as those of the emer¬ 
gency price check with its follow-up work in May had shown that 
a high degree of compliance could be gained by frequent and regular 
store checks. Volunteer specialists had been appointed in three- 
fourths of the districts of the country, but the number of price panel 
assistants did not seem to increase. Region I, which had never looked 
favorably upon volunteer price checking, was again urging the use of 
paid personnel. Region III, disappointed in its recruiting efforts, was 
toying with the same idea. Several cities in various parts of the coun¬ 
try were experimenting with the use of paid employees lent by business 
firms. National office leadership seemed to have weakened. Early in 
1944 the estimates were made and the need for approximately 125,000 
price panel assistants was recognized. In spite of this, no national 
campaign was undertaken either to enlist the cooperation of the 
women's organizations or to increase consumer participation which 
might in turn lead to an increased understanding of the problem and 
to active help in the boards. 

The OPA needed another 75,000 volunteers, and the new volunteer 
specialists and the new board supervisors were free to recruit them 
where they could. By the beginning of 1945 this was a dubious privi¬ 
lege. By the third year of the war civic-minded individuals, not 
otherwise employed, had already offered their services to one or an¬ 
other of the patriotic agencies. Except through some organized 
agency, it was practically impossible to get more than an occasional 
new recruit. Yet the national office made no official requests of the 
patriotic agencies or the national women’s organizations. Because 
of a commitment to the Information Department, the Volunteer Sec¬ 
tion was not even permitted to approach the national groups directly. 
4 his prohibition held true at the regional level also and remained in 
effect until the middle of 1945. No large organizations were 
committed to furnishing volunteers for OPA. The district volunteer 
specialists had to make their own contacts and in many regions de¬ 
vise their own recruitment plans. 

It took the specialists an average of 6 months each to build their 
volunteer corps into a dependable working unit. During this time 


8 Excerpt, “Student Volunteer Program for War Price and Rationing Boards”, Region VI. 





129 


The Organized Volunteer Pro grain 

they found and trained the volunteer assistance supervisors. The 
number of these grew from 1,112 in July 1944 to 2,271 in July 1945. 
They set up reliable reporting systems, and gave out the volunteer 
awards when they were earned. They went over the old lists of 
volunteers, dropped those who were no longer interested, and recalled 
those who had been neglected but were available. The first national 
training material, the “Battle Line” series, 6 came out early in 1944. 
The district supervisors used these to advantage and improved the 
general average of training over the country. By a combination of 
relieving the paid clerks from certain responsibilities and making it 
clear that they were in no danger of being supplanted by the volun¬ 
teers, the specialists established a more congenial atmosphere in which 
to receive the volunteers. Gradually a more stable corps of volunteers 
was built up. Slowly the average number of hours per volunteer in¬ 
creased. But the time had passed when one person, no matter how 
zealous, could easily find a large group interested in price control and 
free to give time to it. Only in areas where the specialists were ex¬ 
ceptionally able and where the board operations staff gave them in¬ 
telligent support, did the actual number of OPA volunteers increase. 

According to the national volunteer specialist, Region YII (with 
headquarters in Denver, Colo.) achieved the most outstanding success 
under the organized program. Since Region VII made only slight use 
of volunteers before the appointment of volunteer specialists, a study 
of their methods will help in understanding the factors necessary for 
success. 

The Volunteer Program in Region VII 

This region contains the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado, Mon¬ 
tana, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and New Mexico. Its distances are 
vast, its population sparse, and travel extremely difficult. Its popula¬ 
tion varies from the Spanish Americans in New Mexico to the largely 
Scandinavian population in Utah. The volunteer program developed 
in this region reflects these difficulties and variations. The individual 
district office histories of the volunteer program and the over-all re¬ 
gional summary prepared after controls were lifted, reveal the varying 
methods used. 7 

The regional report 7 emphasizes that the regional administrator, 
the regional board executive, and the district board executives were 
wholeheartedly behind the work of the volunteer specialists. There 
are many indications in the regional histories that this in itself put 
volunteer work in Region VII in an unusually advantageous posi¬ 
tion. A second factor responsible for success was that the regional 


8 A chronological list of all training material is included in the appendix. 

7 History of Volunteer Program, Region VII, Elizabeth Blanc. OPA Bibliography, 191,0- 
1,7, item 10K.66. 



130 


V olunteers in OP A 


volunteer specialist and four of the six district specialists were women 
with wide backgrounds in organizational work. The regional special¬ 
ist herself mentions that: “In the two instances where board clerks 
were promoted to this position, their knowledge of OPA did not 
compensate for their lack of broad general experience. s However, 
five out of seven specialists with experience in volunteer organization 
and the firm support of the board operations officers put Region VII 
in an enviable position for building a volunteer program. 

Recruitment was the main problem here as elsewhere. As the 
regional specialist put it: 

In the meantime, the Red Cross with its tremendous historic appeal, had been 
conducting an unending campaign for volunteer help. The American Women’s 
Voluntary Services, with glamour and uniforms, was busily filling its ranks, 
and the Block Mothers, the Nurses’ Aides, the USO and all the other war agencies 
had already established their claims to the rapidly diminishing supply of the 
so-called leisure group. 0 

In Montana the district specialist solved her recruitment problem 
by choosing as supervisors women already prominent in the various 
organizations of each town. Mrs. Fred Lively, appropriately the 
supervisor in Great Falls, 9 may have been the most energetic in the 
State, but she seems to have been fairly typical in her methods. She 
recruited a corps of 75 women and was apparently able to keep her 
ranks filled by the simple expedient of putting responsibility on a 
volunteer organization by asking it for a replacement whenever one 
of its members became inactive. But she did not depend upon the 
organization for keeping her volunteers interested in the program. 
She wrote each one a personal note with the monthly survey instruc¬ 
tions ; she thanked each price panel assistant for her work of the month 
before and told her of the general results. The loyalty and responsi¬ 
bility of this group was demonstrated in July 1916 during the weeks 
when OPA was legally “nonexistent.” Not only the active but also 
inactive former volunteers crowded into the local board to see whether 
they could help. This loyalty to the program seems to have been 
typical of the volunteers throughout the State. Recruits were gained 
through the women’s organizations and she educated them so thor¬ 
oughly that they became not only price panel assistants but repre¬ 
sentatives of OPA in their communities. In this way she achieved 
one of the primary goals of community participation. 

In Utah the recruitment problem was met through the cooperation 
of the Mormon Church. Church members were accustomed to the 
idea of volunteer community participation. Although all church 
members already had their civic duties assigned, once the church was 


8 Ibid. 
8 Ibid. 


I 















The Organized Volunteer Program 131 

persuaded of the need for this work their relief societies provided the 
workers. 

Having undertaken the job, they did it thoroughly. Not content 
with checking the 15 or 20 items covered in most surveys, the price 
panel assistants of Salt Lake City checked every item on the com¬ 
munity price list, 300 of them, each month. Little is said in this record 
about recruiting and nothing about retention. The price panel assist¬ 
ants were sufficient in number and gave a sufficient number of hours 
to do the work required. With these problems settled, the supervisor 
could concentrate upon training, and the price panel assistants were 
able to check 20 times the national number of items. The result was 
obvious: the national compilation of regional reports, April 1945, 10 
gives Salt Lake City as leading the country in compliance. 

New Mexico developed a unique plan. There the lead was taken 
by the district board executive, John E. Campbell, who persuaded all 
divisions of the district to cooperate in monthly surveys to cover all 
retail outlets of every kind. This implied the preparation of 35 
different surveys by the price department each month; 8 was about 
the limit in other areas. It required a careful schedule of training 
meetings in different parts of the State conducted jointly by price 
and enforcement specialists. It necessitated the recruitment of the 
highest percentage of volunteers, in proportion to retail population, 
in the country. To hold those volunteers, a second series of meetings 
was held each month, clinics to discuss the results of the surveys.. 
The advice of the price panel assistants was sought on methods of 
meeting the conditions found in the surveys. Campbell, in his ac¬ 
count of the work in New Mexico, stresses the fact that the price 
panel assistants were made an integral part of the panel meetings. 
This may account partially for the fact that the number of price 
panel assistants in New Mexico grew from 210 in March 1944 to 816 
in May 1945. This number represented almost 50 percent of all the 
price panel assistants in region VII. New Mexico also had the largest 
community service group in the region, and outside of California, 
had the largest group in the country. The volunteer records do not 
show the number of panel members at this time, but Campbell speaks 
of the necessity of enlarging the panels to take care of the increased 
work. The number of panels per board was increased from 5 to 9, 
and in Albuquerque the number of panel members was increased from 
25 to 200. The compliance in New Mexico can scarcely be compared 
with that in other States because no other State had compliance 
records on all of its retail outlets. 

Perhaps the main significance of this “experiment” lay in its demon¬ 
stration of the possibilities of a unified plan. All divisions of OPA 


10 Board Operations files. 



132 


Volunteers in OP A 


were involved in the price control program of the local boards. With 
all units cooperating, the permanent staff was adequate to keep this 
large organization moving effectively. In Campbell’s report no refer¬ 
ence is made to the methods of recruiting 816 price panel assistants in 
an area where there were only 8,028 retail outlets, but he does mention 
that price panel assistants frequently brought friends to the monthly 
“clinic” on “inflation control.” Perhaps the enthusiasm of the staff 
was contagious. Certainly the results in community interest and com¬ 
munity participation were astounding. 

Denver, too, developed several original sources for volunteers. The 
commanding officer at the Glenwood Springs Sanitarium agreed to 
allow convalescing soldiers to do clerical work at the boards, and, when 
they were able, to survey the local stores. Returning soldiers proved 
to be interested in the problems of inflation. They enjoyed the experi¬ 
ence of price checking and asked for more stores to cover. The chaplain 
Was appointed liaison officer, or volunteer supervisor, and with the 
help of the chief clerk made out a weekly schedule showing how many 
men would be needed and where they were to report. A panel member 
offered his car, and the price panel assistants surveyed not only 
Glenwood but all the towns for some miles around. The experience 
was successful enough for both the men and price control so that the 
arrangement was duplicated with several other hospitals in the region. 

Denver also made extensive use of college student volunteers. This 
plan, while not unique in Region VII, was developed so thoroughly 
there that it became known as the Denver plan. Arrangements were 
made with faculty members in economics, merchandising, and home 
economics, so that their students were given laboratory credit for 
making store surveys. An average of 2 hours per week field work was 
allowed as 1 hour credit, and a monthly minimum of 8 hours was re¬ 
quired from each student. At Colorado College the work of the stu¬ 
dents was rated jointly by the merchants, the OPA staff, and the class 
teacher. Training was given by the supervisor on specific surveys, 
and once or twice a year OPA specialists were brought in to discuss 
the broader economic aspects of the work. A 1946 report from Denver 
mentions 8 colleges as participating in this cooperative plan. 

The monthly board reports show that the district volunteer 
specialists of Region VII achieved their goal: they provided the oper¬ 
ating divisions with volunteers. The problems of recruitment were 
conquered. The caliber of the volunteers was unusually high and the 
training was thorough enough in many cases to meet college stand¬ 
ards. Retention problems are not even mentioned in any of the district 
histories. The number of price panel assistants within that region in¬ 
creased from 570 in March 1944 to 2,142 in July 1945, an increase of 
nearly 400 percent in 16 months. In the same period the total number 




133 


The Organized Volunteer Program 

of all volunteers in the region increased 250 percent from 2,851 to 
7,861. 

Since these results were not duplicated nationally, it is worth under¬ 
lining the circumstances which seem to have contributed to such success. 
The district supervisors who were most effective were women with 
wide public relations experience; in most cases they worked through 
organizations, not on an individual recruiting basis; and, most im¬ 
portant from their own observations, they had the full cooperation 
of the board operations officers. 

The national volunteer figures told a different story. The March 
1944 number of 40,757 price panel assistants rose to 46,000 in June, 
sagged slowly over the next year until in July 1945 it was only 37,480. 
The goal of 125,000 price panel assistants was quietly forgotten. Re¬ 
conversion was in the air and the national office board management 
never made a major drive for volunteers. 

The validity of the administrative techniques used at the local level 
does not rest upon the number of volunteers gained in 1945. The 
experience in Region VII demonstrates that the techniques were basi¬ 
cally sound. Had they been in effect in 1943 when volunteers were 
more plentiful, it is possible that the survey needs of 1945 could have 
been met. Even in 1945 had they been tried as wholeheartedly 
throughout the country as in Region VII it seems fair to assume that 
an appreciable over-all increase in volunteers would have resulted. 
But the cooperation between operating divisions achieved in Region 
VII w r as almost unique and national office leadership in this respect 
was at least confused. By 1945 the effectiveness of the entire price 
panel system was jeopardized by this failure to recruit enough price 
panel assistants to make the surveys. The compliance value of volun¬ 
teer price checking can only be evaluated in those areas where there 
were enough price panel assistants to make regular and frequent sur¬ 
veys. In these cases the monthly records are conclusive and consistent. 

Administratively the volunteer program was greatly improved after 
the hectic days of the emergency price check. The Office of Board 
Operations, reorganized as the Division of Boards, had been given full 
administrative authority for the boards in the fall of 1944. They 
were given complete administrative supervision, and technical super¬ 
vision had to be filtered through them. Interdepartmental squabbles 
were reduced by this unity of approach. But the price program was 
a controversial one, calling for aggressive leadership, and in only 
one or two parts of the country did the board executives give it this 
all-out support. Administratively the operation of the boards im¬ 
proved, but the national number of price volunteers never increased 
appreciably after the Price Division lost contact with the volunteers. 



















CHAPTER 

11 

Volunteers, 1946 


In November 1945 the monthly publication for volunteers carried the 
names of 128 people who had given more than 5,000 hours each to 
OPA. 1 The number that had given more than 1,000 hours each, ran 
into thousands. These long-term volunteers, added to the board mem¬ 
bers who had already served 3 and 4 years, made up the backbone of the 
volunteer program. They were the “faithful” volunteers, rationing 
or price, who stayed on to do whatever was needed during the various 
crises of the final year of price control. 

Reorganization 

The peak of the volunteer program occurred in June and July 1945, 
shortly before VJ-day. With the shooting war over, people in all oc¬ 
cupations needed a reaffirmation of purpose to hold them to their work. 
No such word was sent, however, from the national office to the volun¬ 
teers; instead the work in the boards was practically paralyzed by a 
series of reorganizations and consolidations. For nearly 4 years OPA 
had been reiterating that the main inflationary peril would come after 
the military victory; but when that time arrived all national programs 
for volunteer work were called to a halt. Within the next few weeks 
the Volunteer Section and the positions of all the volunteer specialists 
were abolished. The price panel division was abolished and the price 
surveys suspended. On the rationing side, gasoline rationing ended 
immediately after VJ-day, and other rationed commodities were re¬ 
leased in the next 2 months. Announcement was made that the local 
boards would be “consolidated,” and their number reduced from the 
5,100 then existing to about 2,000 by the end of the year. To both 
volunteers and paid staff in the boards it appeared that OPA’s pro¬ 
grams were finished. 

This was not the case so far as price controls were concerned, though 
the decision was presently reached to end all rationing except of sugar 


1 See appendix for facsimile of page from “Volunteeers.” 
749937—47-10 


135 





136 


Volunteers in OP A 


with the end of the year. But the demobilization of rationing in itself 
forced a complete reconsideration of the scope and direction of further 
activities in the field offices and in the boards. The decision on gaso¬ 
line was sudden, and it made irrelevant all the plans for reorganiza¬ 
tion that had been going forward during the summer. The con¬ 
gressional appropriations committees called for immediate and dras¬ 
tic cuts in expenditure rates and presently commenced hearings to de¬ 
termine the amount of appropriations to be rescinded. The frailties 
in field office support and supervision of price work in the boards, and 
the continuing indifference to Price on the part of many rationing- 
minded board members themselves, were now well recognized in the 
national office; changes were in order in any event as the focus of 
field work concentrated on Price and Rent. 

In this atmosphere of uncertainty, with no one knowing just how 
fast and how far retrenchment might reach, the Price Department 
made an informal bid to take over the conduct and supervision of all 
remaining board activities. Enforcement went further, suggesting 
that the boards be dispensed with altogether and that their budget be 
devoted instead to a professional enforcement effort on a scale that 
might for the first time be adequate to its task. Bowles set too high 
a value on the boards as political assets to OPA in the broadest sense to 
agree to such an exchange. His decision against both these proposals 
was promptly made, but hopes lingered in some quarters that it might 
be changed. It was not; he picked one of the ablest operating exec¬ 
utives OPA had developed to take charge of a newly constituted 
Office of Price Board Management, to liquidate the rationing activities 
according to a timetable and to rebuild an effective price board opera¬ 
tion. It was no longer necessary to serve the convenience of consumers 
in every neighborhood who needed ration books, but it was still essen¬ 
tial to reach every retail trade center. In the process of board con¬ 
solidation there was some opportunity to select for retention those 
people with the best price control records. The reorganization pro¬ 
ceeded vigorously in Washington during the fall. 

What the national office neglected, however, was the state of mind 
of the volunteers during this period of reorientation. They were left 
largely in ignorance of these Washington developments. ; No message 
came from the top, addressed to them, affirming again the need for 
their work and its importance. Neither the paid nor the volunteer 
staff were assured of the continuance of the volunteer program. The 
result could have been forecast: the volunteers melted away. 

The new price board executives in the district offices took over the 
boards in October only to find that the number of volunteers had 
dropped by 50 percent. In November the national office showed in¬ 
terest in reclaiming them. Letters stressing the importance of volun¬ 
teers were sent out from the Administrator, the Assistant to the 




V olunteers, 1946 


137 


Administrator in charge of Price Boards, the Labor Policy Committee, 
the Consumer Advisory Committees, and the National Veterans Ad¬ 
visory. However, no clarification of a specific program was offered 
and the drop continued. 

A certain loss in volunteers was to be expected. With the end of 
the war the patriotic urge weakened and with the end of rationing 
many of the clerical volunteers felt their work was over. Some of 
these people could have been salvaged for an expanded price program 
but no one had been given instructions to recruit for this purpose. 
In December the national office made a definite move: by teletype they 
instructed each district to rehire the volunteer specialists. In most 
cases this meant finding and training new people. The new special¬ 
ists did a valiant pick-up job but the damage had been done. By 
March 1946 the reduction in volunteer services for the country was 
79 percent. 2 The work at the boards had not decreased by any such 
proportion, and the need for price activity had increased. The boards, 
although reduced to 1,885 in number, still had 2,000,000 retail outlets 
to supervise. 

The Situation in March 1946 

The reduction in numbers did not affect all types of volunteers to 
the same extent. The price panel members suffered least of all in the 
various reorganizations. As rationing disappeared from the boards 
the importance of their work became more obvious. Many of the 
ablest rationing board members moved over to price. The adminis¬ 
trative techniques surrounding their work were much improved. 
The number of price clerks was increased and an excellent docket 
system was introduced. The volunteers were fewer but the additional 
price clerks made surveys and brought in cases for panel consideration. 

In addition there were no new techniques for the panels in 1946. 
The panels received their early grounding in the regulations from the 
price staff and they had their early training in Administrator’s Claim 
techniques from the combined price and enforcement staffs. At last 
the local board loose-leaf service contained a complete explanation 
of their work, and at long last copies were available for each member. 
The price board executives did a careful job of briefing new members. 
Perhaps most important of all, the price panels had continuing tech¬ 
nical supervision from the Enforcement Board Coordinator. Every 
case w T as reviewed and initialled by the Enforcement Coordinator 
before final acceptance. In spite of the shifts of consolidation the 
number of price panel members decreased by only 13 percent. Price 
panels were active and effective in a higher percentage of boards than 
at any previous time. The number of cases they were able to review 


2 Operational report analysis, April and May 1946. 



138 


Volunteers in OP A 


and the number of claims they were able to settle increased steadily. 
In March 1946 they negotiated 6,153 Administrator’s Claims, nearly 
2,000 more than in the previous peak in July 1945. 

The information panels (formerly community service), also re¬ 
tained their direct line of supervision from the national office and 
benefited by that fact. The excellent information programming of 
the last year and a half of price control was initiated in the Informa¬ 
tion Department and passed through the regional information execu¬ 
tives to the district information executives and from them direct to 
the information panels and information clerks. The leadership of 
the national office built this group up from its low of 3,000 in October 
1944 (after the grocer-consumer campaign) to 14,496 in July 1945 
and even after the consolidation held it to a steady 10,000. 

After the consolidation of the boards individual Information mem¬ 
bers were kept on the mailing list in their own areas, were sent the 
publicity material, and continued to be responsible for OPA informa¬ 
tion even in towns where there was no longer a local board. This 
willingness and ability to carry the load independently of the board 
characterized the work of the community service members in 1946. 
Alert volunteer specialists such as those in Region VII were able to 
retain price panel assistants in isolated towns on much the same basis. 
This independent action for OPA had its parallel in the earlier work 
of the distribution rationing officers. In 1946 the information execu¬ 
tives made this method a national policy and in so doing accomplished 
a truly “grass-roots” information program. 

Only the board representatives (formerly called price panel as¬ 
sistants) suffered an irretrievable blow in the reorganization. They 
were completely cut off from contact with their parent organization, 
the price division. In most cases they were also cut off from their 
former administrative supervisors, the volunteer specialists. Their 
work, surveying the stores, was the front line in the price battle. To 


meet the constant fire of retailer criticism of OPA and questions about 
OPA they needed constant training and frequent renewal of their 
faith in the price program. This the board management officers 
seemed unable to give. Even the surveys no longer emanated from the 
price division. They became more complex and required more careful 
technical training. The price board officers found it easier to give 
tins training to the paid price clerks. The clerks were at hand when 


wanted and specialization of service (some clerks worked only on 
groceries, some on consumer durable goods, etc.), counted heavily in 
their favor. The board representatives, once shown by the OWI to be 
predominantly college women, were now considered incapable of 
making the more important of the price surveys. But in spite of the 
handicaps, 50 percent of this group were still on the job in March 
1946. The dignity of their position was never greatly ^improved. For 












Volunteers, 1946 


139 


the first year of the program they were given almost no administrative 
supervision and during the last year they were slighted on the tech¬ 
nical training. The wonder is that so many remained so faithful. 
Lp to the closing day nearly every board had a few responsible, 
trained, persistent, and faithful board representatives who worked 
closely with the price clerks. 

Price Board Management Plans 

The records of the price board management executives and the 
volunteer specialists show that they did a good job of analyzing the 
needs of a volunteer program. They saw that people could be counted 
on in an emergency; peak load volunteers were always available. They 
saw that people will give themselves unstintingly to an “honorable” 
job; in spite of the long hours and the difficulties, there was never a 
serious lack of board members. For the dull in-board clerical jobs it 
became obvious to them that a volunteer supervisor or her equivalent 
was necessary. Their experience proved that someone had, first, to 
impress upon the volunteer the necessity of the work she was being 
asked to perform and, second, show her how to do it. Someone had 
to be ready to arrange for variety or more convenient work at times, 
and perhaps most important of all, someone had to give recognition 
for work well done. 

In several regions the board executives were aware of the needs and 
potential value of the board representatives. In the spring of 1946, 
California, Chicago, and Philadelphia, all sent plans to the national 
office for strengthening, enlarging, and acknowledging the importance 
of this branch of the volunteer service. In each, the board representa¬ 
tives were to be made board members, so that, as the California plan 
put it, they would at last be treated with respect by the other board 
members. The Chicago “Consumer Cost Committees” not only em¬ 
phasized board membership but added a paid clerk to transact the 
business of these survey boards members, stipulated that they should 
have representation at the panel meetings, and access to price infor¬ 
mation at the boards. All of these plans had value, they proposed to 
remedy weaknesses inherent in the program from its beginning, but 
they came too late in 1946 to be put into effect. 

The above plans recognized serious omissions in the organizational 
structure but it was a district volunteer specialist in southern Califor¬ 
nia who put her finger on the national failure to give full support to 
the volunteers even under the existing national structure. Her re¬ 
marks apply equally well to any use of volunteers on a national basis. 
In August 1945 she wrote: 

I would suggest setting up from the beginning of the program a well-organized, 
well-planned national advertising program, identifying the OPA volunteer staff 


140 


Vohmteers in OP A 


with the other volunteer agencies, such as Red Cross, AW VS, NAA, etc. Carry¬ 
ing this further, organizational contacts of all types of national groups should 
be made, followed by State and community contacts, with each group pledging a 
certain number of people and a set number of hours. 

This specialist added another suggestion which may not have such 
universal application but is nevertheless significant in an appraisal 
of the difficulties in retaining volunteers: “In conclusion, each in¬ 
dividual board should have a separate room for volunteers with suffi¬ 
cient desk space and supplies.” 3 

The Office of Price Management in Washington did not make any 
of the suggested changes nor undertake any national advertising pro¬ 
grams but they did send to the field a very good volunteer aid manual 
with recruitment suggestions for the volunteer specialists. This- 
manual put renewed emphasis on the OP A volunteer awards and 
many districts turned with relief to this aspect of volunteer work. 

Awards and Recognition 

The first field directive on volunteers provided that after 50 hours 
of service the volunteer was eligible for membership in the United 
States Citizens Service Corps, an award of the Office of Civilian De¬ 
fense. At that time it was not contemplated that OPA would set up 
a separate award system. However it soon became evident that vol¬ 
unteers who stayed with the program any length of time thought of 
themselves first and foremost as OPA volunteers, and they wanted 
recognition of that relationship. 

In October 1943 the National Volunteer Specialist designed a plastic 
button for both regular volunteers and price panel assistants who 
had completed their course of training and received the oath of office* 
On the button within a fine blue border were the letters OPA and a 
scale as the symbol of equal distribution. Pelow the scale in red 
were the words, “War Price and Rationing Boards” and below that 
“Volunteer” in blue. 

The awards had scarcely reached the field when requests came back 
for some recognition of length of service. A war service award cer¬ 
tificate was designed for those who had served 100 hours. This was 
signed by the OPA Administrator, the district director, and the board 
chairman. In 1945 small red V’s were designed to be added to this 
certificate to indicate the volunteer’s total service. Each red V had 
“100 hours” embodied on it in white. A similar but slightly more elab¬ 
orate certificate was designed for board members. Its most signi¬ 
ficant addition was the signature of the President of the United 
States. 


Carolyn CraIg MacPh ee, district volunteer specialist, San Diego Calif 
Edward Everett, Jr., regional board executive, August 24, 1945. Volunteer files. 




Volunteers, 1946 


141 


When the certificates were decided upon, two additional pins were 
designed. The distinguished service pin was given to volunteers who 
had served 500 hours and the meritorious service button to board 
members with 3 months’ service. Both pins were made of scrap steel 
covered with oxidized silver. 

By the time these service pins reached the field 500 hours was a com¬ 
mon length of service and still another award became necessary. 
This time a service bar or ribbon was designed. It represented 1,000 
hours of service for board volunteers and 1 year’s service for board 
members. To this could be added small Y’s, silver for volunteers and 
gold for board members, each representing respectively 500 additional 
hours and 1 additional year of service. 

No one can accuse OPA of squandering money on these emblems. 
Fifteen cents apiece was the highest cost of any award, but they were 
well designed and the volunteers wore them with pride. Certainly 
the intrinsic value of the pins was not enough to spur people to work 
thousands of hours, but as a recognition of having worked those hours 
their value was inestimable. In May 1947 a Senator telephoned to 
OPA to say that one of his constituents had served many months in 
the local board at home but somehow had never received his presi¬ 
dential certificate. The Senator wished OPA to verify the records 
and send him the proper award. 

Many of the boards made a yearly ceremony of presenting the 
awards. In some towns the mayor or civic organizations gave ban¬ 
quets. There were newspaper reporters and photographs of the vol¬ 
unteers who had given over 5,000 hours. In Baltimore, Md., a retired 
mail carrier gave almost 8 hours a day for almost 5 years; he wore the 
service ribbon and Y’s registering over 8,000 hours. In San Fran¬ 
cisco the Negro janitor of a nearby building earned his volunteer 
award by sweeping the board each morning before working hours; 
in Pueblo, Colo., the fire department “uniforms and all” were deco¬ 
rated for “the large amount of carpentry work they did for us”; 4 
in Washington, D. C., a troop of Girl Scouts with headquarters near 
the district office had grown up during their 4 years of Saturday 
mailing for the OPA. Every local community had its own roster of 
faithful volunteers. 

At the End 

During the price control hiatus of July 1946, although survey work 
was at a standstill, board after board reported that the number of 
volunteers increased. Even the “inactives” came back to show their 
desire to help at this crucial time. After July 26 the boards tried to 
pick up the threads and go on. Meat, poultry, and dairy products 

4 Chief clerk account of Record Board, Pueblo, Calif., OPA Bibliography, 1940—47, 
item 10K.64. 



142 


V olunteers in OP A 


were exempt under the new law. One hundred and forty-two price 
orders, either raising the price of items or decontrolling them, had 
been issued the first day of OPA’s renewed existence. More items 
were decontrolled each day. It was difficult to remember which things 
were under control and which were not. The restaurant controls weie 
so confused under the new law that surveys were forbidden. Then on 
September 10 meat was put back under control, and promptly disap¬ 
peared from the meat counters. A month later President Truman 
announced the end of meat controls and meat prices jumped to a new 
high. The Gallup poll on October 26 showed that 58 percent of the 
people now opposed the price program. The housewives who had 
been warned not to be price policemen, who had been refused price 
lists of their own, did not understand what was left of the program 
and at last they deserted it. On October 31 announcement was made 
that the local boards would be closed to the public on November 4. 
The volunteer program was over. 

Within the next month, records were put in order to be sent to the 
Archives and the final meetings were held. President Truman sent 
a presidential certificate award to each board member and volunteer 
who had stayed on the job to the end. Many boards held meetings 
of paid personnel and volunteers to receive the final awards. 

In one such board the chairman, a retired army colonel, presided 
as he had from the first days of rationing. After the district director’s 
speech the colonel reminisced. He told of his first ration board in a 
sixth grade school room where the waiting applicants had to crouch 
in children’s desks. He told of his awakening interest in the price 
program when a lawyer friend became chairman of the price panel. 
He remembered the time that his price clerk went to a grocery store 
at 4 o’clock in the morning to help the new proprietor get everything 
properly marked because she knew there was to be an area survey by 
10. And the time his price panel assistants scooped the country with 
a 100 percent record on the day that restaurant posting became obli¬ 
gatory. They had visited each restauranteur an average of 3 times 
the previous week, explaining, exhorting, and, when necessary, get¬ 
ting the lists printed for them. He himself had aided the cause by 
getting newspaper coverage on the posting day. He confessed to his 
embarrassment and his difficulties in explaining to 40 Chinese laundry- 
men, through an interpreter, the methods of charging for large and 
small bath towels. He remembered his board’s first Administrator’s 
Claim, $501 for overcharges on nylon stockings. He recounted with 
pride the compliance record of his area. In closing he said that anyone 
who wished to see him during the next few weeks could find him there 
at the board. He had been given permission to go over the records as 
he was writing a history of price control and rationing in his board. 




CHAPTER 

12 

Conclusions 


The kind and degree of volunteer participation given to OPA be¬ 
tween January 1942 and December 1946 constitute one of the major 
phenomena of our national war effort. At a time when most able- 
bodied people had full time jobs, when most jobs demanded more than 
normal working hours, when transportation was difficult, when the 
mechanics of living were time consuming, the people of this country 
nevertheless took millions of man-hours from their nonexistent leisure 
to give to the support of rationing and price control. Men and 
women served as volunteers from coast to coast, from north to south, 
and in our territories. They served in our largest cities, in fashion¬ 
able suburbs, in Harlem, in Chinatown, in villages and at country 
cross roads. They worked in every major field of control; rationing, 
price, information, and enforcement. They performed functions 
ranging from clerical through administrative, advisory, informa¬ 
tional, investigatory, and adjudicative. With very little press ap¬ 
proval, with almost no glamour attached, with some opposition from 
within the agency, with a minimum of “expert handling of volun¬ 
teers”, and in spite of the jurisdictional conflicts inherent in a newly 
organized agency, the number of volunteers in OPA grew from 20,000 
on the opening of the boards in January 1942 to 275,000 in August 
1945, VJ-day. 

By any standard the volunteer administration of rationing and 
price control was a success. The rationing board members success¬ 
fully administered 18 programs over a period of 4 years. The price 
panel members successfully mediated hundreds of thousands of con¬ 
sumer complaints during the first year of their existence, and in the 
last 2 years of price control they negotiated settlements for 71,050 
Administrator’s Claims resulting in $391,347 in refunds to customers 
and $5,132,658 in returns to the United States Treasurer. They kept 
retail violations from becoming popular. In the areas where price 
panel assistants were used consistently they reduced the grocery store 

143 



144 


Volunteers in OP A 


violations from an average of 75 percent to as low as 4 percent. The 
clerical volunteers and the community service members effectively 
supported these programs at great financial savings to the agency and 
to the taxpayers of the country. 

These programs were successful but any programs set up with such 
phenomenal speed and under such pressures were bound to suffer from 
both organizational and administrative weaknesses. These weak¬ 
nesses affected and limited the work of the volunteers and must be 
recognized for the sake of any future need for a similar service. 

1. The first use of volunteers came in the rationing program in 
January 1942, almost before OPA was aware of it. By something 
approaching an organizational miracle these volunteers were func¬ 
tioning in less than a month after Pearl Harbor, and in 2 weeks after 
a specific program materialized. Board members were nominated by 
the local councils of defense and appointed by the State Governors, 
20,000 of them, during this period. These first hastily appointed 
members were not always wise choices for positions of such power. 
They did not always fully represent a cross section of the community. 
These errors in appointment gave rise to charges of discrimination 
and favoritism which, though few in number, were a threat to the 
over-all effectiveness of the program. 

A second weakness in performance stemmed from the very fact that 
board members were representatives of the local community. As such 
they were more conscious of community pressures and desires than of 
the over-all national needs. An outstanding example of the dangers 
in this situation was the overissuance of gasoline, especially by boards 
in the oil-producing States. 

The operational inadequacies of OPA in those early months gave 
still further cause for errors in performance at the local boards. Fre¬ 
quently the forms and applications and instructions were late in ar¬ 
riving. The instructions themselves were too numerous, too long, and 
too legalistic. Not enough explanation was made of the reasons be¬ 
hind the regulations to ensure understanding and support in the local 
areas. At the beginning almost no allowance was made for the dif¬ 
ferences in local conditions. 

Eventually OPA remedied most of these defects but the important 
i act to be noted is that in spite of all these weaknesses the program did 
not break down. The patriotic zeal of the volunteers carried them 
through the confusion and difficulties of the early days and in spite 
of errors, even injustices, the communities accepted rationing as a 
local responsibility. It was theirs and they carried it through. 

2. The Price Division failed to take advantage of the patriotic 
fervor following Pearl Harbor. Although the price control act was 


Conclusions 


145 


passed in January 1942, the month the rationing boards opened, com¬ 
munity participation was not enlisted in the price program until more 
than a year later. When in 1943 volunteers were finally invited to 
become board members for the price program, recruiting was done 
by the local OPA staff on a district to district basis rather than by a 
national office appeal, across the country, as in the case of rationing. 
In spite of this, public-spirited citizens responded and 20,000 price 
panel members were appointed in those first 3 months. Their work 
was crippled in several ways by the year’s delay. To begin with the 
housewives who had been urged not to be price policemen had accepted 
their passive role. They failed to send complaints to the local board 
when they were overcharged. Even as late as 1945, an OWI survey 
showed that only 7 percent of the women interviewed had ever re¬ 
ported a violation. In addition a series of surveys showed that the 
women did not question or verify prices when they marketed. This 
source of community support was almost completely lost to the price 
panels and to the program. Any agency following down a similar 
path would do better to capitalize on the initial gains that are possible 
through community acceptance of and responsibility for a program. 

The price panel members also found their work more difficult be¬ 
cause of the attitude of the rationing board members. After a year 
at the local boards in which price had been only a name, the rationing 
personnel, paid and volunteer, resented the addition of new volun¬ 
teers and new problems. In some cases the board chairmen actively 
obstructed the work of the price panels. If, another time, a dual pro¬ 
gram is to be carried in one operating unit, either both programs 
should be established at one time or an aggressive central office cam¬ 
paign should be undertaken to educate all personnel to acceptance of 
the new situation. 

In some areas the price program was even more seriously obstructed 
by the attitudes and disbeliefs of the district staff. A large degree of 
district and regional autonomy developed during the first year of 
price control. As noted some executives developed their own schemes 
during this period, others who were opposed in principle to the use of 
volunteers resented the 1943 decision and failed to give the program 
more than lip service. Under these conditions the volunteer contri¬ 
bution withered. Because of inadequate reporting systems it was diffi¬ 
cult for the national office to put its finger on either the cause or the 
exact spot of volunteer failure. 

In 1945 a national docket system and attendant statistical charts 
changed this situation. From then on districts were rated monthly 
on a national scale and poor performance laid directly on the doorstep 
of the executive responsible. 


146 


Volunteers in OP A 


Two points should be noted, one relating to the mechanics of opera¬ 
tion, the other to the personal element which can never be eliminated. 
First an adequate reporting system is essential in a decentralized oper¬ 
ation. Second, it was not only necessary to have a paid staff large 
enough to keep the volunteer organization moving but that paid staff 
must be committed to the program. Volunteers made successful con¬ 
tributions to price control in every region and almost every district 
at some time between January 1942 and December 1946. But in every 
successful operation some responsible staff executive believed in the 
principle of community participation and took the initiative in trans¬ 
lating that belief into support for the volunteer effort. 

In some areas industry members were appointed to panels covering 
their own trade. Almost always this proved to be a mistake. But on 
the whole the district directors profited by their experience in ration¬ 
ing and saw to it that the price panel members were not only respon¬ 
sible members of the community who believed in price control and 
that they represented a cross section of the community but also that 
they had no financial interest in the commodity which their panel 
handled. When in 1944 the price panels were delegated power to nego¬ 
tiate settlement for the Administrator’s Claim they displayed the 
tendency, seen in rationing members, to feel closer to their local com¬ 
munity than to national regulations. Some panels were unwilling to 
recommend a treble damage settlement against a member of their own 
community. As in rationing it took training and frequent review of 
performance to educate these panels to their responsiblity. 

3. Price panel assistants suffered even more than panel members 
from the administrative indecisions and conflicts of the first year of 
price control. The price panel assistants represent the one agency 
failure in recruitment. OPA was unable to enlist them in sufficient 
numbers to carry out the objectives of the program. Although nearly 
50,000 were enrolled at the peak of the program they never reached 
the goal of 125,000 needed for systematic checking of the Nation’s 
retail outlets. A search for the reasons of this partial failure brings 
us back to the name-calling of 1942 and to the basic motivation of 
volunteer workers. The experience of all the big volunteer agencies 
bears out the statement that one who works without financial return 
must receive community recognition of the value of his work. In 
general this public approval was denied to the volunteer price checkers. 
The phraseology applied to these volunteers in 1942, by OPA officials 
opposed to the plan, never quite died out of the public mind. When in 
1943 the national office decided that it was necessary to use price panel 
assistants in educational and compliance work they made every effort 
to prevent any action or approach to action, which could be construed 










Conclusions 


147 


as “snooping.’' The first commandment for all price panel assistants 
was “Introduce yourself to the manager.” But the early impression 
made upon the public mind was stronger than the facts in the case. 
Every district history mentions the snooping charge as a deterrent to 
recruitment. Even the Office of Civilian Defense, the agency supposed 
to recruit for OPA, in many areas refused, or failed, to recruit for this 
service. Late in the life of the price control program, OPA officials 
attempted to remedy this situation. It was suggested that the position 
of price checker be dignified, that he be given training and board 
membership on an equal footing with rationing, price, and community 
service members. It was suggested that a national recruiting cam¬ 
paign be undertaken redefining the job and presenting it with the 
sponsorship of the national women’s organizations. These plans came 
too late in 1916 to be used but should be considered carefully in any 
future use of volunteers in survey work. 

These 1946 plans were correct in their emphasis. The last 2 years 
when price panel assistants were supervised by the board operations 
staff proved that administrative supervision alone did not solve their 
problems. Administrative supervision was never more that a second¬ 
ary consideration with the board members. But a separate entity, 
definite leadership, and a clearly defined group objective with group 
responsibility were the decisive factors in each branch of the volunteer 
service. There was no substitute for technical supervision and direct 
channels of communication from the program divisions above the 
boards. 

4. The community service members were given an accredited posi¬ 
tion in the boards and they had community respect throughout the 
program but they suffered from national office indecision as to the 
role of the consumer in price control. When educating the com¬ 
munity seemed of vital importance, as in the first year of Chester 
Bowles’ administration, their number doubled and trebled; when this 
emphasis shifted as it did during the grocer-consumer campaign, their 
number dropped to an all-time low. Again, in the last year of price 
control when they received definite and regular programs from the 
national office their number again grew and then remained stable in 
spite of the general decline in volunteers. Community Service mem¬ 
bers, like price panel assistants, responded mercurially to the inspira¬ 
tion of technical leadership from the national office. 

5. Administrative supervision was as necessary to volunteers as to 
paid personnel. It was important wherever large numbers of vol¬ 
unteers were used without definite organization or leadership of their 
own. This applied particularly to the clerical volunteers, in most 
areas to the price panel assistants, and, whenever technical supervi- 


148 


Volunteers in OP A 


sion was withdrawn, to the community service members. OPA was 
slow to realize the need for supervisors who understood the psychol¬ 
ogy of the volunteers. Not until the installation of volunteer spe¬ 
cialists did OPA formulate nationally the most elementary precepts 
for personnel work with people who are giving their services to a 
cause: (1) volunteer records must be kept as scrupulously as those of 
paid personnel; the time given must seem important both to the agency 
and the volunteer; (2) the volunteer’s possible limitations on avail¬ 
able hours must be respected and discounted in plans for performance; 
(3) since the volunteer comes to the program through interest, a def¬ 
inite effort must be made to sustain that interest; generally speaking, 
training is his minimum wage, and (4) the volunteer must be given 
public recognition for work well done. 

A few of the lessons to be learned from OPA experience apply 
specifically to volunteers but the majority of them apply to paid as 
well as volunteer personnel in any decentralized operation. With this 
in mind certain generalizations and warnings may be stated. First, 
in the administration of a central policy through a widespread local 
system, communication becomes a matter of paramount importance. 
Instructions must arrive on time. They must be simple and definite. 
They should be easily available to all personnel. Contacts must be 
frequent. Training must be continuous to provide for changes in 
program and changes of personnel. Training material must be 
adapted to the experience of the people receiving it. Above all the 
reasons behind the instructions must be carefully given. They must 
be clear and convincing to the people far removed from the source of 
authority. Second, performance must be constantly reviewed to pre¬ 
vent the establishment of incorrect patterns and reporting systems 
must be adequate to allow for realistic evaluation of performance. 
Third, in operations as technical and as varied as those of rationing 
and price control both administrative and technical supervision are 
necessary. OPA experience would seem to prove that while adminis¬ 
trative supervision may be given successfully on an over-all board 
basis, excellence of program performance depends upon technical 
supervision and motivation routed in a direct line from the central 
office. Multiple supervision of board activities was one of the admin¬ 
istrative problems never fully solved by OPA. And lastly, central 
office authority should recognize that local conditions vary. When¬ 
ever possible regulations should be drawn to allow for discretion, well 
defined and limited, but still discretion, on the part of the local admin¬ 
istrator, paid or volunteer. 

The final conclusion to be drawn from OPA’s experience in volunteer 
local board administration cannot be expressed in terms of adminis- 



Conclusions 


149 


trative lessons, nor even in an appraisal of program achievements and 
failures. It lies rather in the recognition that the democratic urge 
toward participation in the processes of government is still strong in 
the American people. In any national emergency they can be counted 
on to contribute “their common effort for our common good”; more 
than that, they must be reckoned with. Under OPA they volunteered 
for a national emergency and they stayed on the job as long as they 
were persuaded of national need. They shaped what they found. 
They stayed through the hard hours and the dull hours for four long 
gruelling years. Their dollar contribution based on the lowest clerk 
salary scale, runs in to millions. Their contribution to the processes 
of democratic administration of Federal policy can scarcely be over¬ 
estimated. 

















k 



























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. 
















APPENDIX 

RHODE ISLAND 

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152 


Volunteers in OP A 



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154 


V olunteers in OP A 
F. A. L.-23 


Office of Price Administration 
Washington, D. C. 

May 3, 1943. 

FIELD ADMINISTRATIVE LETTER NO. 23 1 

Use of Volunteers in War Price and Rationing Boards 

Part I 

Employment Standards and Procedures 

Section 1. Purpose. —The purpose of. this part is to describe the 
methods which shall be used in the recruitment, recognition and dis¬ 
missal of volunteers for work in war price and rationing boards. Sec¬ 
tions 1 through 8 apply to all volunteers except those recruited for 
emergency work (peak period volunteers) to whom only sections 1, 2, 
and 3 apply. 

Sec. 2 . Relationships with the Office of Civilian Defense. —The Office 
of Civilian Defense has the responsibility (Executive Order No. 9134) 
for recruiting volunteer workers in connection with all war activities 
of Federal agencies. Arrangements for the recruitment and registra¬ 
tion of OP A volunteer assistance shall be made with the Office of 
Civilian Defense and its field organization. 

Sec. 3. Requests for Volunteers .—Requests for volunteers shall be 
submitted by the board chairman to the local defense council or its 
volunteer office. Each request shall contain the following information: 

A. Type of worker (typist, receptionist, etc.) needed; 

B. Duties to be performed ; 

C. Number of men and women volunteers required; 

D. A statement of qualifications desired; 

E. The location of the board; 

F. The minimum number of hours per day and per month which the 
volunteer is expected to give. 

The request shall be signed by the board chairman. 

If the local defense council or its volunteer office cannot provide the 
necessary number and types of volunteers, the board chairman shall 
recruit the volunteers from other sources in the community and shall 
notify the district office of the action taken. 

Sec. 4. Interviews of Prospective T olunteers. —Prospective volun¬ 
teers shall be interviewed by the board chairman, chief clerk or the vol- 

1 Issued to the local boards in the Local Board Service as Local Board Administrative 
Letter, Organization No. 5. 





Appendix 


155 


unteer 2 assistance supervisor. Each prospective volunteer shall be re¬ 
quested to fill in the “Volunteer Personnel Data” side of OPA Form 
No. 572-9 prior to the interview. This data shall be used as an aid 
in the interview and in the placement of the volunteer. Volunteers 
appointed shall be representative of the community in which they 
work. 

Sec. 5. Oath of Office. — Volunteers shall take a Volunteer Oath of 
Office, OPA Form No. 572-7, which shall signify agreement with the 
statement of his duties and responsibilities. 

Sec. 6 . Recognition of Volunteer Wbrkers. — Volunteer workers who 
complete the training courses prescribed and operated by the board 
shall be presented with a Volunteer Certificate, OPA Form No. 572-8, 
by the chairman of the board. 

When a volunteer completes 50 hours of service or other local re¬ 
quirements he is eligible for membership in the United States Service 
Corps. His name shall be forwarded to the executive of the Service 
Corps. Membership in the Citizens Service Corps is the official recog¬ 
nition of the Office of Civilian Defense for services performed by 
volunteers on the home front. 

In boards where volunteers are already working they should be 
registered with the Office of Civilian Defense in order to become eligi¬ 
ble for membership in the Citizens Service Corps on completion of 
50 hours of service. 

Sec. 7. Termination of the Unsatisfactory 'Service by Volun¬ 
teers .—When a board chairman has determined that a volunteer has 
not given efficient service or has caused dissatisfaction among the 
volunteers, he shall request the local defense council or its volunteer 
office to terminate the services of the volunteer to the board by a 
given date. 

Part II 

Volunteer Assistance Supervisors 

Section 1 . Purpose .—The purpose of this part is to provide for 
the use of volunteer assistance supervisors in war price and rationing 
boards. 

Sec. 2 . Appointment and Qualifications of the Volunteer Assistance 
Supervisor .—Each board chairman shall appoint a volunteer assist¬ 
ance supervisor from nominations submitted by the local defense 
council or its volunteer office. In boards where volunteers are al¬ 
ready working, the volunteer assistance supervisor may be chosen 
from this group. In selecting the volunteer assistance supervisor, the 


2 See Part II of this Letter. 



256 Volunteers in OP A 

board chairman shall determine that the individual selected has the 
following qualifications: 

A. Ability to work with others. 

B. Ability to organize and supervise the work of others. 

C. Maintain personnel data records and time reports on volunteer 
workers. The time report may be kept on OEM Form No. 396. It 
is required by the Office of Civilian Defense that a time report on 
volunteers be submitted. 

D. Act as liaison officer with the defense council or its volunteer 
office in the recruitment of all volunteers needed for work with war 
price and rationing boards. 

E. Arrange training courses for volunteers on the purpose and 
methods of operation of the Office of Price Administration and any 
necessary training in the specific tasks volunteers are to perform. 
These courses shall be conducted by a member of the district office 
staff or by the volunteer supervisor under the guidance of the board 
chairman or the chief clerk. 

F. Forward the names of volunteers who have become eligible for 
membership in the United States Citizens Service Corps to the execu¬ 
tive of the Service Corps. 

G. Recommend to the board chairman for awards of Volunteer 
Certificates OP A Form No. 57*2-8 the names of volunteers who have 
completed the training courses prescribed and operated by the board. 

H. Notify the board chairman of the names of volunteers who 
should be removed because they have not given satisfactory service. 

Part III 

Regular Volunteers 

Section 1. Purpose .—The purpose of this part is to outline methods 
which should be followed in using regular volunteers to supplement 
the paid staff of the war price and rationing boards. The term “regu¬ 
lar volunteers” shall be used to designate volunteer workers who are 
appointed with the understanding that they shall devote at least 30 
hours a month to work in a war price and rationing board. 

Sec. 2. Placement. — Regular volunteers may be placed in positions 
such as the following: 

A. Receptionist. 

B. Registrar. 

C. Stenographer, typist. 

D. Correspondence clerk. 

E. Recording and reporting clerk 

F. Filing clerk. 

G. Certificate processing clerk. 



Appendix 157 

H. Counter clerk. 

I. Telephone clerk. 

Sec. 3. Estimates on Number Needed. —The number of regular 
volunteers which a board needs to provide adequate assistance to the 
paid staff will vary among boards. In general the number may be 
estimated as being three or four times the number needed if full time 
workers were employed. 

Sec. 4. Training and Assignment. —Regular volunteers shall be 
trained in the over-all OP A program and when necessary in the spe¬ 
cific duties of the jobs they are to fill. Regular volunteers shall report 
to the volunteer assistance supervisor of the board for assignment and 
scheduling of their work. In the absence of the volunteer assistance 
supervisor, the regular volunteers shall report to the chief clerk. 

Part IV 

Volunteers for Program Assistance—Price 

Section 1. Purpose. —The purpose of this part is to provide for the 
use of price panel assistants as aides to panels engaged in the price 
control program. 

Sec. 2. Appointment of Price Panel Assistants. —Whenever, in the 
judgment of the price panel, the successful performance of the vari¬ 
ous duties and functions assigned them requires the use of volunteer 
assistance, the chairman of the price panel shall certify this fact to 
the chairman of the war price and rationing board. The board chair¬ 
man shall solicit nominations from the local defense council, and 
shall make such appointments from these nominations as are neces¬ 
sary to fulfil the needs of the price panel. 

Sec. 3. Qualifications. —The price panel assistants should possess 
the following qualifications: 

A. They should be persons of good character, who believe in the 
objectives of the Office of Price Administration. 

B. They should have no direct financial interest in any retail estab¬ 
lishment or be members of organizations which represent the retail 
trade. This does not preclude the appointment of members of con¬ 
sumer cooperatives as price panel assistants. 

C. They should be able to devote sufficient time to their duties, and 
should agree to devote a specified amount of time on a regular weekly 
schedule to be fixed by the chairman of the price panel. To be most 
effective, a price assistant should be willing to spend from 3 to 4 hours 
a day, 2 to 3 days a week, on his or her assignment. 

D. They should be intelligent, tactful, alert, neat, trustworthy, have 
the capacity to learn, and a willingness to work. 


V olunteers in OP A 


158 

E. They should represent as nearly as possible a cross section of 

the community in which they live. 

F. If possible, they should have had some training in the field of 
purchasing at retail, such as persons who have had courses in home 
economics, home and institution management, family economies, etc. 

Sec. 4. Functions and Duties. —Price panel assistants may partici¬ 
pate in the following types of price functions upon assignment by the 
price panel: 

A. Distribution of informational materials to business establish¬ 
ments within the local board jurisdiction. In this connection, price 
assistants may be asigned to work with trade relations committees and 
with trade groups in the scheduling and programming of campaigns, 
clinics, meetings, etc. They may also engage in educating retailers on 
the requirements of those regulations upon which they have been 
specifically trained. 

B. Dissemination of information to consumers on the various as¬ 
pects of the price-control program. In this connection, price assist¬ 
ants may be assigned to work with the community service members 
of the war price and rationing board, with special wartime com¬ 
mittees working under the auspices of the Office of Civilian Defense, 
and with groups or organizations interested in public education on 
price control. 

C. Collection of price information for the use of the price panel. 
In this connection, price assistants may be assigned to obtain data in 
connection with the setting of community prices, to obtain informa¬ 
tion for the verification of consumer complaints, to check posted prices 
against established ceiling prices, and to check such visable evidence 
of compliance as posting, marking, and ticketing. 

D. Preparation of materials for filing and other clerical assign¬ 
ments. 

E. Performance of such other functions as may be assigned by the 
price panel after consultation with the district price representative 
assigned to work with the price panel. 

F. The price panel assistants shall work directly under the super¬ 
vision of the chairman of the price panel. 

Sec. 5. Training. —The price panel and the district price repre¬ 
sentative shall make such arrangements for the training of price 
panel assistants as required for the programs for which price panel 
assistants are recruited and for specific assignments upon which they 
may be engaged. 

Sec. 6. Recognition. —The price panel assistant who completes 50 
hours or more of service is entitled to membership in the United 
States Citizens Service Corps as provided in part I above. 

Prentiss M. Brown, Administrator. 



PRICE PANEL ASSISTANT S GUIDE 

May 7, 1943 

Your Part in the Food Price Program 

As a major effort in the program to control food prices, the Office 
of Price Administration lias issued, for your community, dollar-and- 
cent prices on certain food items. These prices are of two kinds: 

1. Community prices—issued by the district OPA office in your 
area and covering certain grocery and dairy products. See the com¬ 
munity pricing order for commodities covered. 

2. National dollar-and-cent prices—issued by the National OPA 
office. As of May 10, the regulation setting pork prices by zones all 
over the country is in effect. See the poster on pork prices for your 
zone. 

You have been requested to help in making these prices effective in 
your area and to help retailers in following these regulations. Here 
are instructions and suggestions which you should follow in order to 
accomplish these objectives. 

Suggestions on How to Make Your Visit Successful 

I. Ask for the manager or owner of the store. Introduce yourself 
as a representative of the price panel of his War Price and Rationing 
Board. Tell him you have been assigned to help him in pricing his 
goods and posting his store in accordance with certain orders issued 
by the Office of Price Administration. 

II. Plan your questioning so as to take as little of his time as is 
necessary to cover the information set forth in the assignment sheet. 

III. If you discover that his prices are in excess of the prices es¬ 
tablished in the community pricing order, tell him that the prices in 
the order are the highest prices which may be charged by any retail 
store in the community. If his store is not in a class for which the 
flat community price was established as a ceiling price, his ceiling 
price will continue to be established under Regulations 238 and 268, 
copies of which may be obtained from the nearest district OPA office. 

IV. You should check to see that the class of his store (OPA-1, 2, 
3, or 4) is posted where consumers can readily see it. On or near the 
cash register is the suggested location. If his store is not posted, tell 

159 



160 


Volunteers in OP A 


him that the order requires him to determine his classification and to 
post that classification. If he does not know how to determine his 
class, tell him to consult his price panel or the district office. 

V. The regulation setting dollar-and-cent prices for pork by zones 
requires the retailer to post the prices for his class of store. See that 
he had his poster displayed prominently in his meat department. If 
he does not have a poster, tell him it may be secured from his War 
Price and Rationing Board or the district office. Dollar-and-cent 
prices on other meats or commodities will be established in the near 
future. Be sure to check the posting provisions in subsequent orders. 

VI. Be polite and courteous at all times. Do not try to answer 
questions on subjects not covered by your assignment. Refer the re¬ 
tailer to the price panel or to the district office. Do not argue with 
a retailer who refuses to listen or to cooperate ; be sure to report such 
a situation to your Price Panel. 


LIST OF TRAINING MATERIALS RELATING TO PRICE- 
CONTROL ACTIVITIES AT LOCAL BOARD LEVEL 

National 

1. Handbook for War Price and Rationing Boards: 

Prepared by the Training Branch, Personnel Division. 
Printed. 42 pages. January 1944. 

2. Handbook for Price Panel Assistants: 

Prepared by the Training Branch, Personnel Division. 
Printed. 28 pages. January 1944. 

3. Guide for Training Field Price Representatives in the Price Panel 

Program: 

Prepared by Price Panel Section and Training Branch, Office 
of Price Administration. Multilithed. 30 pages. September 
1944. 

4. OP A Is Our Battle Line: 

A Drama of Price Control, prepared by Price Panel Section 
and Training Branch, Office of Price Administration. Set of 
50 charts, 17" x 23". September 1944. 

5. Price Panel Program: 

Prepared by Price Panel Section and Training Branch as 
part of the “Job of the District Director,” Office of Price Ad¬ 
ministration. Multilithed. 18 pages. June 1944. 

6. Retail Compliance Through Price Panels: 

Prepared by Price Panel Section and Training Branch, Office 
of Price Administration. Multilithed. 12 pages. August 
1944. 

7. Your Job As Price Panel Assistant: 

Training slide-film for Price Panel Assistants, prepared by 
Department of Information, Office of Price Administration. 
100 frames. 

\ 

8. Handbook for District Volunteer Specialists: 

Prepared by National Volunteer Section, fall 1944. 

9. Handbook for Volunteer Assistance Supervisors: 

Prepared by National Volunteer Section, fall 1944. 

10. “Volunteers 

Bimonthly publication addressed to “those who direct [volun¬ 
teers’] activities.” Prepared by Training Branch, Infor¬ 
mation Department, Operating Divisions, and Volunteer 
Section. First issue January 1945. 


161 


162 


Volunteers in OP A 


11. Volunteer Aid Manual: 

A handbook for district volunteer specialists, board super¬ 
visors, and volunteer specialists, covering recruitment meth¬ 
ods. Prepared by National Volunteer Section and Price 
Board Management. January 1496. 

Regional 

1. The Administrator''s Claim: 

A skit in three scenes for training of price panel members. 
Region 6, Office of Price Administration. Mimeographed. 
12 pages. October 1944. 

2. Training the Price Panel Assistant: 

Region 8, Office of Price Administration. Mimeographed. 
10 pages. October 1944. 

3. Do's and Don'ts When Checking a Meat Market: 

Region 6, Price Department, Office of Price Administration. 
Multilithed. 8 pages. No date. 

4. Know Your Meat , Beef: 

Sound movie, one-reel. Region 6, Office of Price Administra¬ 
tion. No date. 

5. Training Materials for Price Panel Assistants, Know Your Meat , 

Beef: 

Region 8, Office of Price Administration. Multilithed. 14 
pages. No date. 

District 

1. What You Can Do to Make Price Control Work: 

Prepared by Sherwood Dodge, District Price Executive. Dis¬ 
trict Office of Price Administration, Washington, D. C. 5 
pages. 

2. How You Can Tell Top Legal Prices—The Wartime Consumer's 

Bill of Rights: 

Prepared by Sherwood Dodge, District Price Executive, Dis¬ 
trict Office of Price Administration, Washington, D. C. 5 
pages. September 1943. 


VOLUNTEERS’ POST EXCHANGE 

The following is a list of names of some of the long-term OPA 
volunteers who have given thousands of hours of their time to War 
Price and Rationing Boards to help protect their communities from 
the ravages of inflation and to assure everybody a fair share of the 
Nation’s supply of necessary things that were short during World 
War II. 

REGION II 


Baltimore, Md., District : 

Mrs. Albert Bouic. 

Mr. Berry Clark. 

Mr. Albert Eklund. 

Binghamton, N. Y., District : 

Mr. Charles F. Bagley. 

Miss L. Granclin Baldwin. 

Mrs. Mark T. Mann. 

Mrs. Grover W. Phelps. 

Miss Helen N. Chapman. 

Mrs. Norman Beringer. 

New York, N. Y., District : 

Sgt. M. Kadushin. 

Mrs. Henrietta B. Frederick. 

Mrs. William Propos. 

Mrs. Elizabeth Schoenberg. 

Mrs. Harriet F. Nagele. 

Mr. Hubert Clark. 

Mr. Otis Skeele. 

Sister Garadus, St. Josephs College 
for Women. 

Mrs. James A. Garfield. 


Pittsburgh, Pa., District : 

Mrs. Harvey Martin. 

Mrs. Mary Jane Brady. 

Mrs. Edward Mason. 

Mrs. R. S. Wortley. 

Mrs. Harvy Potts. 

Mrs. Cora Ferguson. 

Miss Sarah Messmore. 

Mrs. Leroy Johnson. 

Scranton, Pa., District : 

Mr. Roy Flaring. 

Mr. Marvin Bloss. 

Mr. Ralph Harter. 

Syracuse, N. Y., District : 

Mr. Harry Shoomaker. 

Mrs. Charles Rodman (Edith), 
Mr. Samuel Hopkins Adams. 
Washington, D. C., District: 

Mrs. Ida Smith Walters. 


REGION III 


Saginaw, Mich., District : 
Mrs. Mabel McLean. 

Miss Sophia M. Marshall. 
Miss Bernice Fischer. 
Mrs. Yerna Groat. 

Mrs. Mary Scheurmann. 
Mrs. Lillian Johnston. 
Mrs. Jennie Baker. 

Mrs. Georgiana Knapp. 
Mrs. Ruth Smiley. 

Miss Rommelda Bammel. 
Mrs. Regina Levy. 

Mrs. Isabelle Goodeyne. 
Mrs. Celia Harris. 
Louisville-, Ky., District : 
Mrs. Mabel Abney. 

Mrs. Freda Murion. 
Cleveland, Ohio, District : 
Mrs. Darwin S. Lumtz. 


Detroit, Mich., District : 

Mrs. John Sawyer. 

Mr. John Fleming. 
Escanaba, Mich., District : 

Mr. Stuart B. Miller. 

Grand Rapids, Mich., District 
Mrs. Harry Perrigo. 

Mrs. Amy Smith. 

INDIANAPOLIS, IND., DISTRICT : 

Mrs. Florence Redman. 
Mrs. Lissetta Norris. 

Mrs. Cecile Hailman. 

Mrs. Bessie Baylor. 

Mrs. Elsie Cox. 

Mrs. John Halladay. 

Mrs. Chloe Bartling. 

Mrs. Edith Wright. 

Mrs. Iona Bonser. 

Mrs. Gertrude Solomon. 


163 




164 


Volunteers in OP A 


Indianapolis, Ind., District —Con. 
Mrs. Louise Richardson. 

Mrs. Mary Groble. 

Mrs. Clara Bramming. 

Mr. Willis Spitzer. 

Mr. R. N. Eastman (deceased). 


Indianapolis, Ind., District —Con. 
Mrs. Marie Simms. 

Mrs. Herbert King. 

Mr. Theodore F. Fontaine. 

Mrs. Ann Diffenderfer. 

Mrs. Allegra Meeks. 


Birmingham, Ala., District : 
Mrs. B. L. Rich. 

Mrs. Henry Neal. 

Mrs. Katherine Webb. 
Mrs. John Todd. 

Mrs. J. E. Clem. 

Mrs. Thomas Woodroof. 
Mrs. F. G. Poer. 

Miss Mamie Kinney. 

Mrs. R. P. Corder. 

Mrs. F. A. Todd. 

Mrs. Hoyt Wilson. 
Columbia, S. C., District : 
Mrs. Susan S. Bennett. 


REGION IV 

Jacksonville, Fla., District : 
Mr. R. Blaine Dawson. 

Miss Madge P. Middleton. 
Mr. Ii. L. Reynolds. 

Mr. L. H. Hill. 

Raleigh, N. C., District : 

Miss Rowena Borden. 
Roanoke, Va., District : 

Mr. Hamilton V. R. Fairfax. 
Mrs. Bryan Agee. 

Miss Annie Surgent. 

Mrs. D. W. Mason. 


REGION V 


Fort Worth, Tex., District : 

Mr. E. D. Lee. 

Dallas, Tex., District: 

Mrs. G. B. Strong. 

Mrs. E. E. Hollerman. 
Mrs. L. E. Casey. 


St. Louis, Mo., District : 

Mrs. Charles Manassa. 
Tulsa, Okla., District : 
Mr. John Nofire 


REGION VI 


Chicago, III., District : 
Miss Delina Walker. 
Mr. Fred Schwers. 
Miss Elizabeth Hurt. 
Mr. Philip Flolir. 

Mr. William Scott. 
Mr. James E. Elliott. 
Mrs. A. Herr. 

Miss Doris Frey. 

Mrs. Kate Bojarski. 
Mrs. Roy Stanger. 


Des Moines, Iowa, District : 

Mr. Payson Snow. 

Green Bay, Wis., District : 

Mrs. A. W. Raue. 
Milwaukee, Wis., District : 

Mr. Herman F. Schroeder. 
North Platte, Nebr., District : 

Mr. A. W. Hawkins. 

Peoria, III., District : 

Mrs. Hazel Lane. 
Springfield, III., District : 
Mr. Frank Carter. 


REGION VII 


Colorado Springs, Colo. : 
Miss Helen Jackson. 


Denver, Colo., District : 
Mrs. Ruth Cornell. 

Mr. William Duckworth. 


REGION VIII 


Fresno, Calif., District : 

Mrs. Althouse. 

Los Angeles, Calif., District : 

Mr. Fred Wider. 

San Diego, Calif., District : 
Mrs. Nancy H. W. Sperry. 


San Francisco, Calif., District : 
Miss Betty Lavagnino. 

Miss Florence Rose. 

Miss Rebecca S. Morrison. 









Appendix 165 

Volunteer report.—May SI, 1943, continental United States and Territories 


Region 

Paid em¬ 
ployees 

Number 

boards 

Number 

VAS’s 

I. Boston.... 

3, 036 

737 

85 

II. New York_ . 

6, 838 

630 

420 

III. Cleveland_ . . 

5, 163 

645 

375 

IV. Atlanta ... . 

5,543 

892 

279 

V. Dallas. ____ 

5,068 

757 

243 

VI. Chicago. ... __... 

4, 997 

845 

317 

VII. Denver. . 

1, 262 

334 

140 

VIII. San Francisco___ 

3,321 

597 

280 

IX. Territories. ... 

228 

119 

7 

Total_,.. 

35, 456 

5,556 

2,146 


Region 

Regular cleri¬ 
cal volunteers 

Price panel 
assistants 

Peak load 
volunteers 

Community 

service 

Total 

Num¬ 

ber 

Hours 

Num¬ 

ber 

Hours 

Num¬ 

ber 

Hours 

Num¬ 

ber 

Hours 

Num¬ 

ber 

Hours 

I. Boston_ 

II. New York.. _ 

III. Cleveland.. 

IV. Atlanta. _ 

V. Dallas. ... . . 

VI. Chicago _ 

VII. Denver . ... 

VIII. San Francisco._ 

IX. Territories.. _ 

Total__ 

1, 682 

5, 451 

3, 206 
2, 260 

4, 270 

6, 323 

1, 120 
7,578 

596 

26. 574 
82, 729 
46, 088 
28, 885 
60, 752 
97, 885 
14, 759 
191, 696 
8, 420 

1,499 

6, 529 
7,278 
4, 199 

7. 889 
6,162 
2, 142 
2,162 

426 

12. 824 
34, 054 
33, 239 
17, 892 
30, 251 
32, 773 
8, 522 
21, 247 
3, 385 

1,146 
5,081 

5,657 
6. 406 
4,214 

6, 056 
1,318 

1, 803 
227 

5,742 
32, 038 
48,811 

42, 447 
34,113 

43, 886 
9, 654 

21, 453 

1, 573 

305 

358 

235 

885 

515 

883 

3,261 

340 

192 

2, 348 
2. 488 

1, 504 
4, 293 
2,453 
4, 207 
5,023 

2, 647 
937 

4. 632 
17,419 
16, 376 
13, 750 
16, 888 
19, 424 
7,841 
11, 883 

1, 441 

47, 488 
151, 309 
129, 642 
93, 517 
127, 569 
178, 751 
37,958 
237, 043 
14, 315 

32, 486 

557, 788 

38, 286 

194, 187 

31, 908 

239, 717 

6, 974 

25, 900 

109, 654 

1. 017, 592 


District office monthly statistical report on local hoard operations, continental 

United States and Territories, July 23,1945 

A. COMPOSITION AND ANALYSIS OF BOARD MEMBERSHIP 



Number of 
boards 

Number of 
members 

Clergymen_ . ...... . .. ... . 

1,600 

4,131 
1,147 

3, 335 
3,612 
2, 356 
1,059 
2, 267 

4, 577 
197 

4, 590 

2, 269 
24,139 

1, 644 
7, 556 

11,061 
5, 951 

2, 392 

3, 892 
23, 648 

755 
43, 768 

5, 554 
127, 075 
1, 510, 608 

Consumers . ..... .. _ ___ . . .. 

Doctors . .. ..._ _ ____ .. _ .... 

Educators, (teachers, etc.) __ .. ___ . ___ 

Farmers_ . . .. _ .. . .. .. - ... . ... 

Labor (organized) .. .. . ----- . ._ _ 

Labor (unorganized) ... . ... 

Lawyers ... _ __... .. . _ ... _ _ 

Merchants .... . ... 

Negro members _ . .. ... . .. __ 

Others _ ...__ . . _ __ ___ __ 

Total number of boards . . ..... . __ ..... 

Total number of board members__ . __ .... 


Estimated number of hours spent by all board members... . . . 


B. BOARD ORGANIZATION 

Price: 

Total 


Total number of price panels_ 

Total number of panel members--- 

Total number of full-time price clerks_ 

Number of panels with full-time price clerks. 
Number of panels with part-time price clerks 

Number of panels with assistants..- 

Rationing: 

Total number of ration panels- 

Total number of ration panel members... 
Total number of full-time ration clerks... 


8, 256 
36, 252 
6, 166 
3,928 
4, 223 
6, 808 

19, 498 
1 75, 000 
22, 077 


Administrative: 

Total number of community service panels- 

Total number of community service members- 

Total number of boards with executive committees 
Total number of volunteer assistance supervisors... 


3, 612 
14,913 
2, 345 
2, 279 


1 Estimated. 












































































































166 


Volunteers in OP A 


District office monthly statistical report on local hoard operations, continental 
United States and Territories, July 23, 1945 —Continued 

C. VOLUNTEERS 



Total num¬ 
ber 

Total hours 
worked 

Regular volunteers, clerical and distribution officers_. _ __ . 

33, 272 
37, 480 
29, 548 

7, 506 

591, 067 
189, 567 
263, 637 
23, 541 

Price panel assistants - -__ _ .._- .- _ 

Peak-load volunteers (extras).- . . ___ __ 

Community service volunteers_ . _ _ .... ..._ 

Total number of volunteers _ . . . __ __ 

107, 806 

1, 067, 812 



Reduction in volunteer services, percentage hy regions, at Mar. 31, 1946, as 

compared to peak month 


Region 

Peak 

spring 1945 

March 

1946 

Percentage 

drop 

VIII_ 

13, 665 

16, 870 
17,419 

7, 841 
16, 660 
20, 230 

17, 464 

7, 054 

1,017 

1,639 

2, 578 
1,453 

3, 790 

4, 901 

4, 656 

2, 536 

Percent 

93 

90 

85 

81 

77 

76 

73 

64 

IV_ 

II_ .. 

VII___ 

III_ - - 

VI_ 

V_ 

I_ _ 

National_ ... . .. _ . . - 

109, 489 

22, 570 

79 



Reduction in volunteer services—hoard members, price panel members, 

information panel members 


0 

Board 

members 

Price panel 
members 

Information 

panel 

members 

1945 

March. . _ . __ 

112, 291 
117,810 
122, 731 

124, 301 

125, 487 
123,918 
111,060 

91,606 
74,131 
63, 723 

34,652 

35, 654 
34, 879 
34,919 
35,152 

36, 004 
36. 673 
32, 051 
28, 982 
27, 754 

11.291 
12,327 

IQ A QQ 

April_ - .. ... _ 

May _ .. ___ . . 

June. ... .... ....... 

14, 254 

1 A JQA 

July_ .. . ... ......... . . 

August.. ..... . 

14 Q1 Q 

September. . __ . . 

14 94*3 

October... . _ .. . . 

1 9 9fiA 

November_... . . 

1 1 49ft 

December ..... .... 

10,074 


1946 

January ... _ ... 

48, 366 
43, 817 
43,093 

31,421 
29, 320 
28,198 

10,135 
10, 421 
10,012 

February... . ... . 

March_ . . 


Drop—From peak month to March 1946—percent 

66 

13 

33 


5 GOVERNMFNT PRINTING OFFICE: 1947 
























































































































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